China's Tencent, as well as Russian firms, ProfMedia and DST, have submitted their offers for AOL's instant-messaging service ICQ, which is reportedly valued at up to $300 million.

Since its spin-off from Time Warner, AOL has been trying to remake itself and is currently selling its non-core assets, including ICQ.

ICQ, whose name derived from the homophonic phrase "I seek you", has 42 million active users. Among them, 18.5 million are from Russia, said Wednesday's Beijing News.

Tencent's QQ service, a Chinese answer to ICQ, is known for its reigning popularity on the Chinese mainland, which is reported to have over 300 million registered accounts.