After the fiasco where Skype started blocking all IM access to third party Symbian/mobile clients like Nimbuzz and Fring, it seems that ICQ has started doing the same, blocking Nimbuzz, as reported here on the latter's blog. With many IM services already highly proprietary, it seems that the Instant Messaging is imploding before our eyes. Or maybe we'll all end up on Google Talk and Jabber? Comments welcome if you're a heavy IM user!
Over the last two weeks we have been chatting with the guys from ICQ about an agreement to continue support for the ICQ community on Nimbuzz. The final offer was to enter a licensing agreement that would see Nimbuzz pay for every person wishing to use ICQ on Nimbuzz.
This would mean that we’d have to pass the cost on to our users, which would be against our principle of making Nimbuzz available to anyone for free. We are sorry to let you know that we have officially switched off support of ICQ on Nimbuzz.
