Omegle has officially shut down after 14 years

All good things must come to an end

Omegle was created with best intentions. Concocted by the rather forward thinking mind of then 18-year-old, Leif K-Brooks, as a way of bringing the world together via webcams and instant connections to anyone in the world at all.

Sadly, however, very few of us will remember much of Omegle other than its hoards of later middle aged men wearing stained vest tops and nothing else.

Announcing its demise on the very site itself, Brooks wrote in the past few hours: "Dear strangers,

"From the moment I discovered the Internet at a young age, it has been a magical place to me. Growing up in a small town, relatively isolated from the larger world, it was a revelation how much more there was to discover – how many interesting people and ideas the world had to offer.

"As a young teenager, I couldn’t just waltz onto a college campus and tell a student: “Let’s debate moral philosophy!” I couldn’t walk up to a professor and say: “Tell me something interesting about microeconomics!” But online, I was able to meet those people, and have those conversations.

"I was also an avid Wikipedia editor; I contributed to open source software projects; and I often helped answer computer programming questions posed by people many years older than me.

"In short, the Internet opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world than I would have otherwise been able to experience; and enabled me to be an active participant in, and contributor to, that world. All of this helped me to learn, and to grow into a more well-rounded person."

Brooks continued: "The premise was rather straightforward: when you used Omegle, it would randomly place you in a chat with someone else. These chats could be as long or as short as you chose. If you didn’t want to talk to a particular person, for whatever reason, you could simply end the chat and – if desired – move onto another chat with someone else. It was the idea of “meeting new people” distilled down to almost its platonic ideal.

"Over the years, people have used Omegle to explore foreign cultures; to get advice about their lives from impartial third parties; and to help alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation. I’ve even heard stories of soulmates meeting on Omegle, and getting married. Those are only some of the highlights.

"Unfortunately, there are also lowlights. Virtually every tool can be used for good or for evil, and that is especially true of communication tools, due to their innate flexibility. The telephone can be used to wish your grandmother “happy birthday”, but it can also be used to call in a bomb threat. There can be no honest accounting of Omegle without acknowledging that some people misused it, including to commit unspeakably heinous crimes."

Brooks went onto explain that these lowlights have concluded in his decision to shut down Omegle to prevent a "heart attack in my 30s".

Regardless of your opinion on Omegle, it certainly formed a big part of many of our lives and will go down in Internet history forever.

You can read the full statement on Omegle itself.