Tencent was founded in November 1998 by Ma Huateng, popularly known as Pony Ma (Ma), a graduate in computer sciences from Shenzhen University, along with his five classmates. Tencent’s first product, OICQ or Open ICQ, was a Chinese copy of the popular ICQ desktop instant messenger, developed and popularized by the Israeli company Mirabilis, and later acquired by AOL. When AOL filed a lawsuit in March 2000 for violation of its intellectual property, Tencent changed the name of the product from OICQ to QQ. Over the years, QQ became the world’s leading instant messenger platform, with more than a billion accounts. Initially developed for desktops, QQ made its way onto feature phones in 2003 and smartphones in 2008. Tencent eventually launched a variety of social platforms and grew into China’s largest and favourite Internet service portal....
