See also
https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/
for more of this type of thing.
Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
141–150 of 215 posts
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
It lives on, as a Nokia/Siemens joint venture. Edit: apparently Nokia bought out Siemens years ago
Oh, I hadn't realized it also got sold off. Let's see, what all was sold off: computer division, analog ICs (Onsemi), digitial ICs (Freescale, NXP), base stations (as mentioned), mobile phones (Motorola Mobility, Google, Lenovo). What did I miss? It is funny that the Motorola as we knew it is gone, but many of the pieces remain. And others were able to make money using those pieces. To this day I still fail to unders…
Large companies are often worth less than the sum of their parts, particularly if there's little synergy between the parts.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conglomeratediscount.as...
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Search for the "smartphone patent wars". There was a few year period when basically everyone involved in the industry were suing each other for pretty much anything. Even user interfaces. The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.
That included a row over the generic concept of a tablet, where in defense the Samsung lawyers brought up prior art ... from the Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". The astronauts in the movie are using something that looks just like a tablet.
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#144Fascinating. Motorola has been part of some very significant things in history (not just because I'm multi-Amiga owner). From my outsider view, it seems the companies who really invest in R&D make the best things happen. Unfortunately the best doesn't always mean the most long term successful (depends on many many more factors than just the quality of the product). I would love to see a world where it was fashionable…
Motorola couldn't do software very well. And software became increasingly important in all the fields they competed in. It turned out to be easier to take a company that was great at software, and turn it into a cellphone company, rather than trying to take a cellphone company and make it great at software.
There are pockets of ex-Moto software engineers that have splintered off from Libertyville and/or Mart that still continue to contaminate the tech scene in Chicago.
I worked with a group of them a few years ago. Their skills were shit but they all walked around expecting managerial positions.
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Search for the "smartphone patent wars". There was a few year period when basically everyone involved in the industry were suing each other for pretty much anything. Even user interfaces. The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.
That included a row over the generic concept of a tablet, where in defense the Samsung lawyers brought up prior art ... from the Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". The astronauts in the movie are using something that looks just like a tablet.
When Blue Origin sued SpaceX over a patent on the concept of landing a rocket stage on a ship, SpaceX showed a Soviet movie with a scene where (fictionally) just that happens.
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similar reaction here. I was an intern there for a couple summers in the late 90s. At the time it was full of life and activity - all the hallmarks of a successful corporation. Never imagined seeing it in this state.
As a French, the company was vastly different to what I was used to. But not only that: when travelling to Schaumburg I was staying in the Embassy Suites on the other side of the road and I remember, jetlagged, waiting for 6 am for the breakfast to be served. There was also a big mall a bit south (I forgot the name) , very much different from the ones we had at home (staring with the fact that you drove around the ma…
> There was also a big mall a bit south (I forgot the name) , very much different from the ones we had at home (staring with the fact that you drove around the mall, and not walked inside.
I'm not sure what you mean. While Woodfield has a rather large parking lot, it was definitely the case that the vast majority of people parked and went inside. You couldn't get to the Apple Store, for example, without going inside. You could get to the anchor stores on the ends from the outside, but you'd often shop there, then go into the mall to get other things. (Or at least my spouse and I did that frequently.)
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#147Bill Gates said that tech companies deserve higher risk premia due to the risk of technological obsolescence (which in short means lower equity price for the same projected future earnings). This story is a good example, IBM is another. Funny to contemplate that given the current prices of tech equity, both private and public.
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#148It is being demolished now. The company doing the demolition must be very proud of destroying things, because they make drone & time-lapsed videos of it: https://johlerdemolition.com/portfolio-items/motorola-schaum... Edit: I meant this in a positive tone, not a negative. I'm glad they take pride in their work.
Random tangent: This is the most bizarre thing I've seen in a while. At the bottom of the page is a "Protected by Recaptcha" logo that follows the page around. Clicking on it does nothing and no Recaptcha is displayed. What is it supposedly protecting and how is it doing that protecting if no Captcha is displayed? (I browse privately and am constantly hit with Captchas, but this one didn't prompt me.)
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Skimming your comment I read “ritual sadistic magic”. Funny how the mind wanders
“Ritual statistical magic” is even more genius: Future civilizations will look down on us for believing that statistics were part of science, not not seeing the hand of the cleric in making them up, just like we look down on middle ages for believing anything monks pretended to translate from the Bible, which in fact they made up.
All praise the holly p-value! May the null hypothesis be with you!
Re: Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Search for the "smartphone patent wars". There was a few year period when basically everyone involved in the industry were suing each other for pretty much anything. Even user interfaces. The graphs of who was suing whom are hilarious by today's standards,.
That included a row over the generic concept of a tablet, where in defense the Samsung lawyers brought up prior art ... from the Kubrick movie "2001: A Space Odyssey". The astronauts in the movie are using something that looks just like a tablet.
You don't patent a "concept." You patent an invention.
I'm not familiar with that particular case, but I really doubt that a clip from 2001 was dispositive of anything. Unless the patent really was as broad as "a flat computing device."