ICQ denies older protocols

News of the day - today ICQ started denying older versions of it's protocols to be used.
This will inevitably break compatibility of many "3rd party" clients, but only for the good.

It's double fun for me, because only last month I sent "goodbye & see you on Skype" notes to all my ICQ contacts, citing many technical problems and low level of innovation which plagued the system for 7 straight years now.
I remember using video chat with Yahoo! IM back in 2001, and with this competing service there never was a missed character due to full international encodings support via UTF, much unlike among a multitude of clients on ICQ using different versions of protocols to connect and causing havoc trying to properly decode "code-page based" messages.
With ICQ, there never was a working video/audio connection, thanks to weak firewall/proxy support and to the need of direct connection.
File Transfers worked day in, day out.
Very annoying were "holes" in protocols, which allowed other clients unsolicited access to your real status.
E.g. one could see if I am really "Offline" or if I am, indeed, in an "Invisible" mode.
Many exploits existed to get the password of some notorious accounts (mostly 5-digit, and "beautiful" numbers).
It was also possible (protocols up to v8) to see the remote party's external IP, and learn geo position from that.
There was also a nice hack which allowed to delete yourself from the remote party's Buddy List, with no confirmation/acknowledgment needed at all.
Add the king of headache, Spam, to that, and you'll get the picture WHY.
Despite some efforts put into bringing all client to a common, compatible level, ICQ have not gone far enough, probably for the fear of alienating it's customers.

Could the actions today mean that the customers are fleeing away, and there's a need and the order "to do something about it"?
And just think of where they all are fleeing to?

With this new move - denying older protocols to be used, and enforcing only the new one, AOL is bravely stepping into the world of security and compatibility. Hopefully.
Every "serious" client app will probably be upgraded very soon.

Anyhow, thank you AOL, but I will stay out once I stepped out.
Nice move, though. If only a little bit sooner.

NB. A related post here.