Omegle has officially shut down after 14 years

Omegle has officially shut down after 14 years.

The iconic website hosted the weirdest and wildest moments on the internet.

It was a video-led chatroom where you could log on and be automatically connected with a stranger.

Each person had the chance to end the call and switch to someone else whenever they wanted.

However, it’s sadly all over.

Founder Leif K-Brooks said in a statement: “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.

Credit: Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

“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.”

He said the internet ‘opened the door to a much larger, more diverse, and more vibrant world’ than he could have imagined.

Leif added that exploring the internet enabled him to be an ‘active participant in, and contributor to, that world’.

“I launched Omegle when I was 18 years old, and still living with my parents,” he said.

“It was meant to build on the things I loved about the Internet, while introducing a form of social spontanelty that I felt didn’t exist elsewhere.

“If the Internet is a manifestation of the ‘global village’, Omegle was meant to be a way of strolling down a street in that village, striking up conversations with the people you ran into along the way.”

He added: “I didn’t really know what to expect when I launched Omegle. Would anyone even care about some Web Site that an 18 year old kid made in his bedroom in his parents’ house in Vermont, with no marketing budget?

“But It became popular almost instantly after launch, and grew organically from there, reaching millions of dally users.

“I believe this had something to do with meeting new people being a basic human need, and with Omegle being among the best ways to fulfill that need.

“As the saying goes: ‘If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door’.”