[HN Gopher] Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
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Abandoned Motorola Headquarters (2020)
Author : sonograph
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-08-13 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abandonedspaces.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abandonedspaces.com)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Sorry for the expression but "holy shit!".
|
| I worked in Motorola for 10 years from the late 90's. I was based
| in Europe but travelled to Schaumburg every two months or so (or
| to Phoenix).
|
| It is really a shock to see this place abandoned - last time I
| was there (15 years ago) it was very much alive.
|
| It has been a long time since I had such a nostalgic squeeze of
| heart.
| davidf560 wrote:
| The whole story as presented in the article and comments here
| is a bit misleading. None of these buildings were "abandoned",
| at least not in any practical sense. The buildings documented
| here were old (from the 70s I believe) and full of asbestos and
| things like that and had really outlived their usefulness, and
| the very large piece of land they occupied had become extremely
| valuable. The buildings were still fully occupied when the
| company decided to sell the campus and relocate to new
| headquarters in downtown Chicago and move manufacturing to a
| new facility in Elgin.
|
| Once sold, the company moved out. Shortly after, demolition
| began, and that's when these pictures were taken. The damage is
| from demolition, not from the normal "abandoned for 10 years
| deterioration" you see on those Urban Explorer Youtube videos.
| People worked in these buildings just a few years ago, and a
| lot of them had been remodeled somewhat recently and were
| actually pretty nice inside. The 6-story building with the
| large atrium was newer than the other parts and is still there
| and the new owner/developer is hoping to continue to use it as
| an office building (last I heard anyway).
|
| Motorola also still occupies the 14-story building that used to
| be the world headquarters as well as another large building on
| the property. The real story here is much more mundane: a big
| company sold off some valuable real estate as part of a move to
| chase a younger workforce in downtown Chicago (jury's still out
| on that decision, especially with a more WFH-focused future).
| arbuge wrote:
| 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.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| 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 mall, and not walked
| inside.
|
| Good memories.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Woodfield Mall
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodfield_Mall
| thewebcount wrote:
| > 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.)
| Jun8 wrote:
| The main building was known as IL02, this is where I had my first
| job interview (the Blue Conference Room!) and afterwards joined
| Motorola Labs in 2004. The tall building shown was called the
| Sector Tower, a lot of money was spent renovating it. My
| colleagues and I would walk up the 6 floors and down after lunch
| for exercise. Mot Labs had 1000+ people around the world when I
| joined, was down to ~30 in 2010. How the times change.
| mml wrote:
| 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.
| fencepost wrote:
| 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.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I had a friend who worked at Motorola back when they had acres of
| clean rooms... he said he always had to fight the urge to open
| one of the emergency exits, sneeze loudly into it, and then close
| the door. ;-)
| Xophmeister wrote:
| They also have a former HQ on the outskirts of, IIRC, Swindon in
| the UK, which was/seemed abandoned for years. I was used in one
| of the Brosnan James Bond movies when it was first built.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| Yes it was in Swindon. The EMEA headquarters.
| tomkat0789 wrote:
| Even stranger is the abandoned Motorola complex built way out
| among the farmlands in Harvard, Illinois.
|
| Motorola has fallen far! When I started a job at a big company in
| a Chicago suburb, they actually asked for a show of hands "who's
| from Motorola" and like 17/20 people raised their hands!
| derekp7 wrote:
| So that Harvard facility -- from what I heard (when I worked
| for Moto) was that it was built for the main purpose to give to
| one of the Galvin family members to manage. They built it as an
| engineering and manufacturing center, and was expecting a bunch
| of engineers that worked at Libertyville to move out there.
| Problem is that was during the dot-com boom and people would
| rather get a different job then relocate to the middle of a
| corn field (actually a lot of people bought out in Crystal
| Lake, causing a housing boom there, which later collapsed when
| the Harvard building was shut down).
|
| Then they outsourced manufacturing (the phones were no longer
| bullet proof after the outsourcing / offshoring). So they made
| Harvard a distribution center. They were hoping to also be able
| to pull workers from Rockford, but that didn't really work out
| either.
|
| At one point, after Moto sold the building, an investor was
| going to turn it into the worlds largest indoor water park.
| That never panned out either.
| wyldfire wrote:
| I assumed from the title that this would be the Harvard
| facility. I never would have dreamed that Schaumburg would be
| shut down as long as the brand existed. How wrong I was!
| khazhoux wrote:
| Startup idea: Airbnb for zombies. Buy up abandoned spaces like
| this, lease them to the undead horde. Payment might be a problem,
| as brains are not readily convertible to legal tender (perhaps
| BTC can help here?).
|
| _Zombnb_.
| matmann2001 wrote:
| Now do the Libertyville office.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| The Libertyville office is now an "innovation center". I think
| the manufacturing floor is being used to make EV chargers by a
| company based in Amsterdam.
|
| https://www.iparkcampus.com/available-space/
| cestith wrote:
| How about the Quincy office, near where Wavering worked and
| near where he and Lear were each born before making the product
| that would be the name of the company? Even the last little
| local sales office closed years ago.
| atdrummond wrote:
| As in Quincy, IL? I grew up there and the town still hasn't
| recovered from the closure.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| This is very interested. Many careers were started, built, and
| ended there. Many fond and not so fond memories formed there. Now
| its wasting away.
| [deleted]
| MacroChip wrote:
| I love the planters inside. Especially in the big open space.
| Does anyone know any names for the architecture and design
| choices of that building?
| selfsimilar wrote:
| I grew up in a neighboring suburb to Schaumburg, and in junior
| high or high school in the late 80's early 90's I remember taking
| a field trip to the Motorola campus (as well as McDonald's
| Hamburger University!). Mostly I remember a showroom museum of
| sorts, where much of the early tech, military field radios I
| remember mostly, was on display.
|
| At the time I was underwhelmed, I think in part because I knew
| Motorola as a failing microprocessor company, but I was sad I
| didn't see what appeared to be that museum space in any of the
| pictures in the linked gallery.
| vidanay wrote:
| Grew up in Arlington Heights a few years ahead of you. (RMHS
| '89). Heady days indeed.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There are several drone videos on YouTube/Vimeo of that
| building, the Galvin Center, being demolished. Top Golf is
| there now.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1aEJFTUmkg
|
| https://vimeo.com/308429582
|
| I find it fascinating how all the metal bits are carefully
| separated and stacked (using big hydraulic claws) for
| recycling.
| derekp7 wrote:
| That would be the Motorola Museum at the Galvin Center (which
| was their employee training facility). Whenever I went there
| for my 6-sigma or 5-nines training, I'd take a stroll through
| the museum and thought it was cool, but sad that it was mostly
| accessible only to Motorola employees and invited guests (since
| you needed an access badge to get on campus). I always wondered
| why they didn't have the museum face a public parking lot with
| public access.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Their micros remain one of the more successful parts of the
| business. Naturally they spun that off to avoid those annoying
| profits.
| kyrra wrote:
| Hi former neighbor!
|
| For those that are wondering, here is the campus on maps:
| https://goo.gl/maps/WdHju125jSbmRbaS9. It looks like it's
| mostly been torn down now (streetview and satellite show it
| gone).
|
| I never visited the campus. My next door neighbor worked there
| (he was a big RF guy and had a a giant shortwave antenna on his
| roof). They also employed so many people that they had their
| own stoplights at their entrance/exit. Plus the city convinced
| them to do staggered start/end times for their employees as to
| not flood the roads around the building.
| didip wrote:
| Many years down the road, will currently famous Silicon Valley
| headquarters suffer the same fate?
| airocker wrote:
| I was a junior employee at Mot as my first job in the worst
| period: 2006-2007. I saw someone in his 50s who had been in Mot
| forever been shown the door very impolitely. We also saw the team
| in Urbana Champaign let go because of some differences with the
| upper management at that time. It was possibly the most crucial
| team to compete with Apple. The environment was crazy with
| layoffs every three months and you can imagine what would have
| been going on there. We used to hear about the big sales parties
| in foreign locations when all of this was going on. Would have
| loved to know if the CEO at that time had better options.
| jameshart wrote:
| I love the tone of this, it's like the musings of an explorer who
| discovered a jungle city abandoned by a mysterious civilization.
|
| "there were old wall slogans inside that must have been added to
| motivate and inspire the employees" ... " the tall building had
| several brick structures on the lower main level. He suspected
| that those structures probably had plants and ferns in them so
| that important business clients and employees would be met with a
| pleasing sight upon entering." ... "Martin Gonzalez also noticed
| pictures of people using Motorola products that had been left on
| the walls of the building."
|
| Indeed, the ways of the people of the Motorola civilization of
| around 2011CE are mysterious and strange to us. Perhaps the
| central atrium served some kind of ritual purpose? Were prisoners
| perhaps thrown off the upper balconies as a sacrifice to their
| gods? We will never really know.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| 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...
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| This book looks great. I just ordered it, thank you for
| mentioning it.
| meoshstabwot wrote:
| Hotel of Mysteries is totally worth it whether you are 35
| or 8.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Archaeologists have found inscriptions referring to the cult of
| "Six Sigma", which is hypothesized to be a primitive form of
| ritual statistical magic.
| tomcam wrote:
| Or perhaps stochastical magic
| olivermarks wrote:
| @pfdietz the battered remnants of the cult of "Six Sigma"
| looks strangely like post Soviet abandoned building
| triumphalist wall writings, albeit with western typography
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Back in the U6sR
| mirkules wrote:
| I used to work for a Motorola-owned company. Digital Six
| Sigma brings back a lot of "belt training" memories
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| A wonderful example of the cargo cult phenomenon!
| eecc wrote:
| Skimming your comment I read "ritual sadistic magic". Funny
| how the mind wanders
| laurent92 wrote:
| "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.
| bitwize wrote:
| Perhaps they will regard our current obsession with
| machine learning as a sort of Tower of Babel built out of
| made-up statistics. Or a castle in the sky.
| hef19898 wrote:
| All praise the holly p-value! May the null hypothesis be
| with you!
| madengr wrote:
| Several black and green "belt" like accessories were found,
| which we hypothesize were used for sacrificial strangulation
| to the statistical deity.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| > structures
|
| Multiple sacrificial altars surrounded by balconies from which
| the faithful could watch.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that Motorola had a very high Dilbert Index.
| pfdietz wrote:
| This strip was a direct reference to some things in Motorola:
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-03-02
| ipv6ipv4 wrote:
| HR wall slogans are cringey when still drying on the wall. They
| are even cringier in a ruin.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The most cringey one to me is the Philips one "Let's make
| things better". Funny enough their slide down into relative
| obscurity started right after introducing that slogan. Up to
| that point they were one of the powerhouses of technology.
|
| Today they are still active in Medical, TVs and light, a
| faint shadow of what they used to be.
| LeonM wrote:
| After 2004, they ditched that slogan and started using
| "Sense and Simplicity" as their new slogan.
|
| I remember after that their consumer electronics got
| really, really bad. Basically all their products were
| just... not finished. The firmware on most of their devices
| was just terribly buggy, and features advertised on the box
| where sometimes not even available. I remember having an
| MP3 player where selecting the FM radio mode would just
| crash the device. Never did they release a firmware version
| that would enable FM radio mode. I had to carry a small
| metal pin in my wallet, just to be able to use the reset
| button behind a tiny hole in the side of the MP3 player. I
| usually had to reset it once or twice a day.
|
| I also had a media streamer that did not work at all out of
| the box, it just didn't support any of the advertised
| codecs. And I had a Phlips TV that would reliably crash
| when switching from TV mode to Teletext mode.
|
| Living in the Netherlands, I felt kind of obligated to
| choose Philips over brands such as Samsung. However, many
| times I found myself returning a Philips appliance, and
| buying a Korean/Japanese made alternative instead.
|
| Never, ever again will I trust them for consumer
| electronics.
| tpolzer wrote:
| You mean its corporate ghost (aka brand name) is still
| active in these things. Afaik they've divested everything
| apart from medical.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| ipieter wrote:
| 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).
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.)
| jameshart wrote:
| Gives you another perspective on the hieroglyphs on walls in
| ancient Egypt though if you imagine them being put there by
| enthusiastic religious branding consultants, and inducing
| just as much eye rolling from the citizens of the day...
| ijidak wrote:
| Lololol. I've never thought about it that way.
|
| But it's true. Citizens of those ancient Egyptian cities
| probably did roll their eyes at some of the wall
| hieroglyphs.
|
| Especially because the pharaohs exaggerated their
| victories.
|
| And the priests probably made up ridiculous stories of what
| their gods "did" and "accomplished"
|
| Some citizens were probably just as incredulous as we are
| today.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Of course they were. They state the human leaders were gods
| and immortals, yet why are they writing these things on
| their burial chambers?
| WJW wrote:
| "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair"
| laurent92 wrote:
| On my startup's wall, I have the top cringy slogans of my
| customers. In the middle sits:
|
| "We advance humanity."
|
| I guess the message is, don't take yourself too seriously,
| most of where companies succeed is happenstance. It still
| takes a moment to all visitors to understand that it can't be
| serious.
| acheron wrote:
| Always ask yourself: Is this good for the company?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5rB63Mzc8
| javier10e6 wrote:
| Reminds me of Kodak Eastman Business Park.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Business_Park
|
| Just visiting Wikipedia found out that they weapon grade Uranium
| in an underground lab... yikes!
| harshreality wrote:
| Reminds me of Bell Labs.
|
| https://www.abandonedamerica.us/bell-labs
| lephty wrote:
| At least that building has been re-imagined and revived as an
| office, entertainment, housing, dining hub.
|
| https://bell.works/new-jersey/explore/
|
| Not to its full, old glory, but at least it is not abandoned
| anymore.
| sharken wrote:
| It's eerily similar to pictures from Chernobyl or Fukushima,
| although without the radiation.
|
| Here are some pictures from Fukushima:
|
| https://www.podniesinski.pl/portal/fukushima-8-years-on/
| sergiotapia wrote:
| This is exactly why I love the Dark Souls series. They show a
| world long past it's time. Just enough detail to give you a
| glimpse of what life was like back in it's prime but not enough
| to ruin the melancholy.
|
| Beautiful!
| xwdv wrote:
| The lack of people leads me to conclude these are actually
| screenshots from Unreal Engine.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I can't help but feel sad for the loss of engineering innovation.
| Yes, the pieces of Motorola live on, but there is a certain magic
| when there are a lot of big pieces working together (like radios,
| semiconductors, entertainment, Etc)
| calcsam wrote:
| "And on the pedestal, these words appear:
|
| My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
|
| Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
|
| Nothing beside remains."
| sintezcs wrote:
| https://www.instagram.com/lanasator/?hl=en
|
| I recommend Lana's Instagram. A really fascinating and scary at
| the same time pics of soviet abandoned building and industrial
| places.
| omoikane wrote:
| Link to the original album for people who just want the pics:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/25165196@N08/albums/7215771215...
| vizzier wrote:
| If you like this sort of thing. Bright Sun Films[1] on youtube
| does a lot of the same abandoned investigation content. Often
| digging a bit into the history of why something was abandoned in
| the first place.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5k3Kc0avyDJ2nG9Kxm9JmQ
| squarefoot wrote:
| Brought to mind the famous video by Dave Haynie about the last
| days of Commodore and their then almost empty fab in West
| Chester, PA, just days before the bankruptcy ended it all. If you
| want an account on how it feels when it's happening, that's
| probably the video to watch. Contains some interesting vintage
| technical stuff too. As an old Amiga user, It makes me both sad
| and angry every time I watch it.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaTjwo1ywcI
| nharada wrote:
| Super interesting. I grew up in a nearby suburb and when I was
| younger Motorola was THE company in the area. It felt like nearly
| all of my friend's parents were employees. It's amazing how
| quickly they fell off.
| pm90 wrote:
| > On the business and entertainment side of things, there will be
| Top Golf, restaurants, a hotel, and a shopping and entertainment
| center, all serviced by parking lots to encourage visitors from
| further afield. The area also hopes to offer concerts, movies,
| and ice-skating.
|
| A similar thing happened to the IBM campus in Austin. "The
| Domain" is essentially land that was formerly owned by IBM. I
| believe there are plans to further develop the remaining site as
| well.
|
| I found this particular statement really funny, as there's a Top
| Golf adjacent to the current IBM Austin site.
| spc476 wrote:
| I recall when IBM left Boca Raton, Florida (where the PC was
| invented) in the mid-90s. About a year after they left, a few
| friends and I roamed the abandoned IBM facility [1] and it was
| odd seeing empty computer rooms sans the raised floors. Some of
| the resulting pits were _six feet deep_ (2m). Crazy.
|
| [1] https://goo.gl/maps/CKrEbTkRDwWQNc2d8 Yes, it's a huge
| hexagon shaped building.
| petecooper wrote:
| See also
|
| https://www.derelictplaces.co.uk/
|
| for more of this type of thing.
| jrexilius wrote:
| Ugh. That hurts my soul. I used to work there in the late 90s at
| its peak. door 13. good place, amazing engineers. So sad.
| geodel wrote:
| I used to live at International Village apartments near Moto
| headquarters. In those days MotoRazr craze starting to fade as
| IPhone was just launched. I remember layoffs were started and
| bunch of folks were laid off in teams I worked with.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Bill 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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
| utterly worthless in any sort of deal.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I remember reading about that! Strange times.
| chiph wrote:
| Not just their patents, but also their cellphone division. My
| understanding was that the Motorola phones were going to be
| Google's flagship devices for Android.
|
| So I bought one, and I really liked it - I got regular OS
| updates (unlike many Android licensees), the phone had a
| gorgeous walnut veneer back, and it fit well in my hand. Nice.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Motorola phones are still the best Android phones. Way better
| that Samsungs / Xiaomi / Huawei phones with heavily tweaked
| (for the worse) devices.
| nomad225 wrote:
| I had a Moto X (2014), and I had a very similar impression.
| The launcher was very minimal and AOSP-like. It was also one
| of the first Android devices that had always-on listening for
| a trigger word (Hello Moto X?). I always found that almost
| magically useful at setting alarms when I was already in bed.
| alexchro93 wrote:
| My dad worked for a division of Motorola that was bought by
| Google and it sure felt like, during that time, if you were
| working for Motorola you could be laid off at a moment's
| notice.
|
| Google stock was eventually included in his compensation
| package, though. I can imagine that eased some of the worry.
| dboreham wrote:
| Precursor to the NFT craze..
| DerekL wrote:
| It's not relevant to the article, which is about real estate.
| Also, the article mentions the split into two companies. Google
| bought Motorola Mobility, but the headquarters went to Motorola
| Solutions.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| > 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "expand" how? Help me out.
| [deleted]
| jsnell wrote:
| 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,.
| H8crilA wrote:
| 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.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| 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."
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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.
| excitom wrote:
| I think what he is referring to is when two mega corps would
| get into an IP dispute, the lawyers would bring the patent
| portfolios to the table. It would not be feasible to actually
| read through them all, so the agreement would be "surely in
| my large stack you are violating something and surely in your
| large stack we are violating something." So then you would
| weigh or measure the height of the stack, and the owner of
| the smaller would pay some royalties to the owner of the
| larger.
|
| This is an exaggeration of course, but perhaps not far off
| the mark.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > "This is an exaggeration" Ya think? Maybe when a big
| company is threatening a rube. If two big companies are
| making a deal, you can be damn sure that they use all
| available software to analyze each other's portfolios, and
| then read, manually, the ones that seem important. And get
| their legal counsels for the relevant divisions to read
| them, too, although they probably already know them.
|
| Cross-licensing deals are immensely complicated. You have
| to think about indemnifying the partners, in particular. I
| actually sat in the Apple v. Samsung trial for one day,
| because Google was indemnifying Samsung, as they frequently
| do for Android partners.
|
| A big problem with Motorola was: they actually _make_ the
| hardware, so Google was being sued directly. The patent
| infringement suits are usually against the company that
| makes the device.
| sonograph wrote:
| It 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.
| vikramkr wrote:
| Why shouldn't they take pride in their work? Its honest and
| important work. Not every building can/should be preserved,
| tearing down these structures is important to remove
| dilapidated safety hazards and/or build something new
| sonograph wrote:
| I didn't mean it negatively. I wrote it with a smile. They
| should take pride in their work!
| Swizec wrote:
| It's their job to destroy things, why wouldn't they be proud?
|
| I'm proud too when I refactor bad code.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Are you proud enough to provide drone footage of the
| refactor?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| sometimes I wish I could
| rpcwork wrote:
| Screen capture, Nope. Drone footage, yes!
| geodel wrote:
| Deleted 5000 lines of code from a project yesterday! And I am
| feeling very good about it :)
| Apocryphon wrote:
| One weird trick to increase code coverage.
| _eht wrote:
| I, too, delete entire projects!
| thewebcount wrote:
| 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.)
| blunte wrote:
| Fascinating. 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 for
| companies to proudly devote 20+% to R&D. It seems instead like
| R&D is 2% at best, and marketing (or legal... patents) is 18%.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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.
| joezydeco wrote:
| 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.
| ansible wrote:
| 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 like Symbian. Most / all of them were
| not that easy to do application development with. And none
| could really scale up in processing power (multi-core, which
| wasn't a thing back then), _decent_ TCP /IP networking, and
| driving a large and complicated GUI.
|
| In one sense, as a leader in the cell phone business, they
| _should_ have been well placed to make a big splash with
| smartphones. But none of their software on that side of
| things was able to transition to that, which is why they
| adopted Android. To their credit, they did produce some
| decent Android phones, but because they relied on Google,
| they were now also competing severely with HTC, Samsung, LG
| and others.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| 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 doomed them for good. I was using the smartphones
| every single day and was making suggestions for UI
| improvements and software features. They ignored all of it.
| Oh well. Everything I suggested became obvious updates once
| the general public had used the iPhone for a year or two.
| ansible wrote:
| 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.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| It lives on, as a Nokia/Siemens joint venture.
|
| Edit: apparently Nokia bought out Siemens years ago
| ansible wrote:
| 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 understand the corporate
| strategy behind all that.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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...
| cestith wrote:
| Motorola wasn't just some cellphone company. The car radio
| went into production there after Galvin hired Wavering and
| Lear. He later changed the name of the company to name it
| after that product. The automotive alternator was invented
| there (by Wavering). They made the 6800, 6809, 68k, and
| POWER/PowerPC processor lines used in various lines of Apple,
| Tandy, Sun, Amiga (later Commodore Amiga), SGI, HP, IBM,
| Momentum, and Raptor Engineering computers (the POWER/PowerPC
| was a partnership with IBM and Apple but largely designed at
| Motorola). Neil Armstrong spoke into a Motorola transceiver
| from the moon.
|
| Motorola broke up into way more than two companies over time.
| It sold its TV business to Matsushita in 1974. Motorola
| bought General Instruments and became the largest builder of
| set-top devices in the world and also spun off ON
| Semiconductor in 1999. Later this home products division
| would largely end up sold to Arris. Freescale Semiconductor
| split off in 2003 then later merged into NXP in 2015. Further
| spinoffs and department selloffs include Iridium, what became
| General Dynamics Decision Systems, and Cambium Networks.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Yes, and even the legacy business (which makes radios for
| emergency responders among many other things) has been a
| great investment. If you bought MSI 10 years ago, you've
| made just under a 20% annualized return if you reinvested
| dividends. And ON Semi has been almost as good over the
| past decade. It's only in consumer cellphones where they
| did really badly.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Is it common to refer to it as MSI (the stock ticker for
| Motorola Solutions)? I would think most think of the
| computer hardware company when they hear that.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Iridium wasn't a sell-off. Motorola was one of the largest
| investors in Iridium, and lost a vast amount of money when
| it went bankrupt. Additionally they were deeply involved in
| its hardware.
|
| The second incarnation of the Iridium corporation we know
| now is the group of people who bought it at pennies on the
| dollar in the bankruptcy auction.
| OldHand2018 wrote:
| Iridium went under because the developing world installed
| mobile networks, and Motorola had a huge portion of that
| market.
|
| Accounting tricks aside, they didn't lose money on the
| downfall.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| In the case of Apple, I think it's especially a case of a
| company great at products. They did great because they had a
| great vision of the product.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| For a commercial company the aim of R&D is to ship competitive
| products. You can spend a lot of R&D and do plenty of cool
| stuff but if you don't ship products you'll go under all the
| same.
|
| For instance Xerox was doing plenty of cool and innovative
| stuff with GUIs and the mouse but then it was someone like Jobs
| (and Bill Gates) that turned that into a hot product. Where's
| Xerox now? Where's Apple?
|
| In engineering we too often forget that sales and marketing are
| crucial.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Xerox: I was there. I just published a book [1] about that,
| written as historical fiction but all facts are accurate. The
| idea is, you can put yourself into the story without knowing
| how it turns out. In particular, you can see how something
| like that can happen.
|
| [1] www.albertcory.io
| blunte wrote:
| This last point is key in the modem connected world.
|
| Before internet, you marketed by being in the right places
| with the right people. Now you have to have a global internet
| strategy and compete with companies who have nothing but
| marketing (and funding).
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| At least Xerox is still alive and a industry leader in
| printer business.
| _moof wrote:
| If you find any 68040s in there, gimme.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| This looks like a set piece from the game Control!
|
| If they ever filmed a movie version of that game (which they
| probably shouldn't, as it could never do the game justice), they
| should do it at that location...
| tuatoru wrote:
| It also looks very like a building in the Amazon TV series
| "Homecoming".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I feel a bit silly now that I always thought Motorola was an
| Asian company.
| Cd00d wrote:
| I had assumed it was European. I put it next to Qualcomm.
|
| Now that I fact check myself, Qualcomm isn't based in
| Scandinavia like I thought, but rather San Diego. I guess I
| just mix all hot-hardware companies of the '90s in with
| Ericsson!
|
| What next??
| belval wrote:
| Glad I am not the only one, for some reason I assumed it was
| Japanese. I think it's because the name really doesn't sound
| American at all.
| yborg wrote:
| According to company legend, the name was a combination of
| "Motor" and "Victrola"; the company founder Paul Galvin made
| some of the earliest car radios, and the Victrola brand name
| was well-known at the time for its phonographs.
| yalogin wrote:
| I still remember the shock I felt when I saw this complex empty
| after the recession. That kind of help sync the extent of the
| recession for me.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| What an absolute waste.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| The Zurich building on the campus is pleasant on the eyes even
| thought they are a not so good employer, and they have a Top
| Golf now (some /s intended).
| vidanay wrote:
| The Zurich building looks like mega sized shipping
| containers. (I know - that is the intended design look). My
| aunt worked for Zuirich for almost 20 years (in the towers),
| never heard anything extraordinarily bad other than normal
| employee grumblings.
| cestith wrote:
| It's a great landmark from the freeway.
| dcroley wrote:
| I remember touring the museum there during a visit as a new
| employee in the early 90s. Only time I ever visited HQ.
| xattt wrote:
| I've been thinking in 50 or 100 years from now, will this be the
| case for the Apple Starship campus? I'm sure Motorola seemed
| indomitable at the time of its construction.
| caoilte wrote:
| It's just as easy to imagine this being most of San Jose
| because of drought.
|
| Or this being every corporate HQ because of the collapse of
| Western Capitalism in the face of global warming.
|
| I'm sure life will go on though.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| i'm not one to wish ill will, but that would be a wicked indoor
| gokart course
| bfrog wrote:
| Motorola is maybe a telling of how complacency and pure business
| leadership can lead to a downfall.
|
| They became complacent, they abandoned their technical leadership
| for bean counters, and became dust.
|
| Intel was almost going down that road.
| cestith wrote:
| Motorola probably started slowly downhill after Lear left and
| Wavering retired.
| davidf560 wrote:
| I suppose it depends on how you define "downfall", but Motorola
| stock this year is at an all-time high, even higher than its
| peak during late 90s during the run up to the dot-com boom and
| when Motorola cellphones were king.
|
| There's been some very hard years in between and it's a smaller
| company now, but it's actually doing very well by many
| standards.
| caoilte wrote:
| Not sure Intel have escaped that fate yet. Ditto Boeing.
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