AOL Collects Final Bids for ICQ from DST, ProfMedia (Rambler) and Tencent (QQ)

AOL has collected final bids to purchase instant messaging (IM) service ICQ. The bids came from Russia’s Mail.ru-major owner Digital Sky Technologies (DST) and Rambler’s owner ProfMedia as well as from Chinese IM service QQ-owner Tencent, reported newspaper Vedomosti.

ICQ has 42 million active users, of which 18.5 million or 44% are in Russia.

The Russian entertainment media group ProfMedia offered $120 million for ICQ, the newspaper said. The Rambler-branded IM client software Rambler ICQ has 5 million active accounts. Rambler Media first partnered with AOL’s ICQ in 2005. The company should have earned revenues of $6 million from advertising in Rambler ICQ in 2009.

Mail.ru has 12 million registered users of its own instant messaging client software Agent@Mail.ru. It’s #2 popular IM software client in Russia, behind ICQ. Russian internet investment group DST, which owns majority of Mail.ru, offered more than $120 million for ICQ, reported Vedomosti.

Yakov Sadchikov is the President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura.