AOL to shut AIM Messenger after 2 decades

San Francisco: Online service provider AOL on Friday said it will shut its pioneering AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) on December 15.

The company reportedly has no planned replacement for the platform in the times when social apps such as Google`s Gchat (now known as Google Hangouts), Facebook and WhatsApp have taken over.

"We know there are so many loyal fans who have used AIM for decades; and we loved working and building the first chat app of its kind in 1997," AOL wrote on the AIM help page.

AOL introduced AIM as a standalone app in 1997. It featured "Away Messages" that were the ancestor to the modern-day tweets and status updates.

"That led to AOL`s fall from grace, going from being valued at $224 billion in today`s money to just $4.4 billion when it was sold to Verizon in 2015," TechCrunch reported.

AIM was a dominating instant messaging platform ever since it was founded in 1997.

It has battled for supremacy with rivals such as ICQ, and messengers from Yahoo and MSN.

MSN Messenger shut down in 2014 and Yahoo Messenger also shut down in 2016.