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Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

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Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Macauley's _Motel of the Mysteries_ is the model for all funny/profound archaeology of the present, I'd say. https://wearethemutants.com/2017/12/06/david-macauleys-motel...

This book looks great. I just ordered it, thank you for mentioning it.

Hotel of Mysteries is totally worth it whether you are 35 or 8.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#105
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light is definitely theirs as well, and even though the TVs and white goods are made abroad they are still just as much Philips's creations as Intel is making CPUs. Edit: this comment is false. Please ignore.

no it’s not. Philips Lighting is split of into a new brand: Signify. They pay to use the Philips name (e.g. for Philips Hue).

Totally missed that, my bad!

(Given that this is in my country and in my field of interest that's a pretty good indication of how big of a miss this is, so thank you for the correction.)

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#106

It's amazing that neither the article nor any of the comments so far mention that Google bought part of Motorola, for its 10,000 patents. Then sold it a few years later. I was in Google Patents and I interviewed people for the position of "acquirer of patents." This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were…

> This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were utterly worthless in any sort of deal.

Could anyone expand on this? Sounds interesting, and I know little about it.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#107
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Before the start of the smartphone revolution (circa 2005) the "smartphones" of the time are what we'd call flip-phones now. They were smart in the sense that they could run apps (J2ME, blech), take pictures and such. Moto had dozens of different models at any given point in time. All running various kinds of (what we'd call today) embedded operating systems, closer to what we'd class as a RTOS these days. Stuff…

I worked in the mobile network part of Motorola. We had smartphones in the lab for testing in 2001. We were all told that they would be on sale by 2003. But that never happened. All of my interactions with the cellphone division were somewhat negative. You got the impression that they thought of themselves as the best of the best and nothing you could offer was worth their attention. The damned RAZR success probably…

What happened with the network / base station side of the business? Moto was doing very well with that in the 1990's. It seemed like that business kind of evaporated, but I don't know why.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#108
heh, I worked a the schaumburg HQ in the mid 90s. We had awful problems getting java applets to print cellphone invoices in a ms/sun compatible way. Many thanks to the anonymous coworker who taught me the dot operation in vi there.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#109
For current status, most or all of the removal is complete - I think there's one empty building that I'm not sure about the plans for.

Counterclockwise from the northwest the credit union is long gone (now "Andigo" and on Meacham) though I think the building is still there, there are some nice looking (and pricey!) apartments along the west side, then there's Top Golf at the southwest corner (which has been in operation for quite some time - pretty sure they were open before the pandemic). South center of the property along the expressway is the area still owned and occupied by a Motorola company. There's Zurich America at the southeast corner, which was the first new construction on the campus several years ago, and another new building ("B") just north and a little west of it that appears finished but I'm not sure it's actually occupied yet - I rarely drive by there during business hours. The east and northeast parts aren't really developed yet, but they're doing a lot of work on the roads around there (Algonquin and Meacham). There's an area of (I think) condos still under construction on the north side along Algonquin, the westernmost buildings are already occupied and they're working east at a pretty decent clip. In the center of the complex is the "B" building mentioned above, as well as the remaining unoccupied old Motorola property.

There's also other construction in the area - one new apartment complex on Algonquin a bit west that's been there for a couple years, IIRC built on vacant land. The single-story office complex directly northwest of the campus was partially removed and is under construction for a new set of luxury apartments or condos, the western half of that complex is also for sale and I wouldn't be surprised to see it torn down and built on soon as well.

My biggest disappointment about the whole thing is that once upon a time there was possibly going to be something called the STAR line, basically a commuter rail line built in the center of 90 running from O'Hare out to Elgin then south. I had dreams of them turning part of the Moto campus into a station and parking for that - would have been great for Schaumburg a decade or two back by providing easy access to the core of Schaumburg's shopping areas when malls were still highly relevant.

Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)

#110

It's amazing that neither the article nor any of the comments so far mention that Google bought part of Motorola, for its 10,000 patents. Then sold it a few years later. I was in Google Patents and I interviewed people for the position of "acquirer of patents." This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were…

> This was a period when they actually thought the "throw weight" of your patent portfolio really mattered in cross-licensing deals. Most of those patents were utterly worthless in any sort of deal. Could anyone expand on this? Sounds interesting, and I know little about it.

"expand" how? Help me out.
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