Mirabilis (company)

Mirabilis

Fate	Acquired
Successor	AOL
Founded	June 1996 (1996-06)
Founder(s)	Yair Goldfinger Arik Vardi Sefi Vigiser Amnon Amir
Owner(s)	Digital Sky Technologies

Mirabilis is an Israeli company that developed the ICQ instant messaging program, a pioneer of online chatting that revolutionized communication over the Internet.^[1]

History

Mirabilis was founded in 1996 by Arik Vardi, Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser and Amnon Amir. It was purchased by America Online (AOL) for $407 million in 1998. ^[2]Funding for Mirabilis came from Yossi Vardi, father of Arik Vardi.

Goldfinger, Visiger, Vardi and Amir met while working for a Tel Aviv software company, Zapa Digital Arts, that specialized in three-dimensional graphic tools for the Internet. In 1996, they left Zapa and began to toy with ideas for new Internet innovations. They created ICQ in less than two months, but had no funding. Yossi Vardi, one of the founders of Israel Chemicals, agreed to invest a few hundred thousand dollars to develop the technology.^[3]Mirabilis was established in a small apartment in San Jose, California, where Internet access was cheaper.^[4]

ICQ grew as people encouraged their friends to join so they could communicate with each other. This established a powerful network effect as prospective users strongly preferred the system where their friends were likely to be.

AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for $187.5 million on April 28, 2010.^[5]

See also

• Economy of Israel
• Science and technology in Israel
• Israeli inventions and discoveries

References

1. ^ Yair Goldfinger, serial entrepreneur / An intensely private technology angel, The Marker
2. ^ "The ICQ Story". ICQ. http://www.icq.com/info/story.html. Retrieved 24 December 2010. 
3. ^ An artist for the high-tech age
4. ^ An artist for the high-tech age
5. ^ "Digital Sky Technologies". Reach Information. http://www.finance.reachinformation.com/Digital_Sky_Technologies.aspx. Retrieved 24 December 2010.