ICQ may be sold

More rumors appear about a possible acquisition of ICQ.

ICQ is one of the most popular instant messaging network in the world, especially in Europe - the total number of users is 33 million.

ICQ was released in 1996 by Mirabilis, and now is owned by AOL Group. As TechCrunch reports, ICQ owners are already negotiating the possible contract. One of the companies interested in purchasing ICQ is Google, which seems to count on expansion in the Russian market - in Russia, ICQ is the most popular IM and has over 8 million users. However, the Russian fund DST is also interested in purchasing ICQ (DST already has shares in Facebook)

Details are obviously not known, but it is estimated that ICQ can be sold for 200-250 million dollars.