Every major instant messaging service has a web-based version of it. For Windows Live, their version is webmessenger.msn.com. Yahoo has webmessenger.yahoo.com. AIM has AIM Express.

All of them are terrible.

But then there’s ICQ2Go. It was just deployed recently and said honestly, it rocks. It’s flash-based, has iPhone-like tabs and animations and is really, really good. This interface compared to all others is super-clean, super-efficient and looks and acts like a modern web app should. In fact it’s so good you’d probably use it as your primary messenger.

The only problem is that even though ICQ holds the distinction as the first instant messaging service on the planet, it’s the last choice anyone would use for communicating over IM.

One can only hope that other web messenger services follow ICQs footsteps. Web-based IM really really needs to function (at least in look) like ICQ does.

My ICQ UIN: 103698 (just in case you want to try it out because I’m probably the only person you know using it)