And while a search for Meyer’s replacement is underway, I’m told it could easily extend into the summer.

It didn’t take long for rumors about “takeover chatter” concerning AMD to emerge, and briefly yesterday, Dell was mentioned as a possible buyer. AMD shares traded up 4 percent for part of the day but closed down 3 cents during the regular session. Dell more or less shot down the rumor. During its earnings conference call, CEO Michael Dell, answering a question on acquisitions, said, “…we’re looking for relatively smaller sized ingredient acquisitions where we can leverage them with our substantial customer access and distribution.” With AMD currently trading at a valuation north of $6 billion with about $2.2 billion in long-term debt, it’s not the kind of target that would qualify as “smaller sized.”

There will always be rumors of this sort about the perennial number two in the PC microprocessor business. Those who trade on them don’t get something fundamental about AMD: That it would be a complicated company to buy and to own.

Any deal to acquire AMD will necessarily include a third party: Intel. For decades Intel and AMD have operated under a series of patent cross-license agreements that give AMD access to the crown jewels of Intel’s intellectual property, including the x86 instruction set. These patents are on the technology that make a PC a PC, and they are fundamental to the success, or failure, of both companies.

When AMD first sought to spin off its manufacturing operations into the company that became GlobalFoundries, Intel asserted that AMD couldn’t assign access to these patents to a third party without its say-so. This dispute ultimately got the two companies talking and resulted in what I like to call the Treaty of Maui, the settlement of a sweeping antitrust dispute in 2009, a story I reported at the time for BusinessWeek.

There are, however, some limits governing Intel’s conduct in this scenario. When it settled an antitrust case against it last year, Intel agreed to hold off on suing any company that buys one of its competitors for a year, in order to hold “good faith negotiations” over the terms of that patent cross-license agreement. What this all means is that any company that first concludes a deal to buy AMD will then have to pivot and face the possibility of lengthy negotiations with Intel that could, if not successful, end in a costly and distracting patent lawsuit.

Intel may turn out to be willing to play ball, and cut a reasonable deal with any new owner, but the fact remains that every so often the cross-license arrangement has to be renewed. And that’s not to say a determined buyer couldn’t ultimately cut through all this and get a deal done. Dell has $15 billion in cash and could conceivably get a deal done, and being an AMD customer could arguably benefit from owning AMD over the long term, but it has signaled that it’s not interested, and probably never was in the first place.

There are other considerations: AMD is 20 percent owned by the Mubadala Development Company, the investment arm of the Arab Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which changes the potential deal dynamic a bit. Then there’s the big question concerning the wisdom of competing with Intel. As AMD’s prior CEOs will tell you, simply grappling with Intel in the marketplace is a dangerous, thankless job.

But the complication of the Intel cross-license agreement alone should be enough to give any company mulling an AMD buyout serious pause. At the same time it should serve as food for thought for anyone wanting to trade on the latest AMD buyout rumor. This surely is not the last.

Abu Dhabi government-owned Advanced Technology Investment Co., known as ATIC, last year bought Singapore-based contract chip maker Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing for $1.8 billion in cash and merged it with Globalfoundries, a company spun off from microchip maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and jointly owned by AMD and ATIC. Globalfoundries, with operations spanning three continents, is now the world’s third-largest contract chip maker behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Microelectronics of Taiwan. But it’s not happy at being No. 3.

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BoomTown liveblogged Google’s earnings call this afternoon.

Earlier today, Google (GOOG) beat Wall Street’s expectations in its first-quarter earnings, signaling that online advertising spending is back on track.

Here we go:

1:30 pm PT: Investor lady went over investor stuff. Zzzz.

1:33 pm: First up: Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google, whose delightful French accent livened up what was an almost entirely newsless event.

In fact, it turned out that the biggest news was changes in how Google presents its earnings calls going forward: No more CEO Eric Schmidt!

Instead, it will be Pichette from here on out, along with sidekick and head products dude Jonathan Rosenberg. Who was not around today, so top Google execs Susan Wojcicki and Jeff Huber filled in.

Also making an appearance, Nikesh Arora, president of Global Sales Operations and Business Development.

Thus, a parade of Google execs replaced Schmidt–all of whom said as little as he used to!

Pichette went through the numbers–lots and lots of them.

“Very strong performance, across the board, in terms of revenue,” he concluded.

1:44 pm: Next up, Wojcicki–fun fact about the VP of Product Management: Google was started in her garage–talking about improvements to ad search results.

They are going to get fat and detailed, apparently, with all kinds of stuff attached to them.

“The idea is for them to be more useful and therefore more high performing,” she said.

In display, Wojcicki said there was “very strong momentum.” More DoubleClick integration, more analytics.

Mobile: “Doing very well.” (I look forward to the first analyst question about its regulatory approval problem with Google’s $750 million AdMob acquisition.)

There will be an ability to “call through” on ads in smartphones, which sounds kind of cool.

1:51 pm: Next, it was Huber’s turn. He is SVP of Engineering.

He started with mobile and geolocation features Google is working on, some of which sounded a bit stalkerish. To the all-seeing eye of Google, they are fabulous, of course.

Its Android and Chrome operating systems are growing, Huber said, noting that there are now 34 Android devices.

Take that, Apple!–which has but one (which is doing pretty well on its own, Huber declined to add).

1:55 pm: Arora joined the call with the others for Q&A.

Questions about international advertising. All was well, said both Pichette and Arora.

Next question was about the percentage of revenue from enterprise and mobile. Also what up with Nexus One?

Pichette was not saying, of course, as that information would be useful.

Also no data on the profits of Nexus one, which Pichette noted was indeed profitable. But Google wasn’t saying how much! More non-news.

Finally, a good question about whether Google will remain on Apple (AAPL) products–given growing corporate rivalry between the two–and why the heck Schmidt is not on the call anymore and whether there is more to it.

Pichette became slightly agitated about the CEO question.

Eric has been everywhere! Abu Dhabi! Washington, D.C.! Jetting around on the GooglePlane like it was nobody’s business!

“It does not mean that Eric is not available,” said Pichette, explaining that the move is simply a question of “streamlining.”

Huber declined to comment about Apple, of course!

But, blood in the water: What’s up with Facebook competition?

This is a true oucher for Google internally, with execs quite concerned about the social networking site’s growth, even if Huber did not admit it and called it “not a significant issue.”

Translation: It’s significant.

2:04 pm Back to the sleepy questions on marketing and how the company feels about upcoming quarters compared with previous ones.

Hey, the colorful letters of Google and Googley goodness are just not cutting it anymore! You need some pretty ads! You have to promote! After all, Google has actual products now, like the Nexus One.

The next questions were on the number of Nexus One phones sold and, finally, on China.

Huber was not disclosing! If there were a badillion devices sold, you know he would, of course.

Pichette took the China question.

“This was a tough situation, but we really think we made the right decision,” he said, noting that the company is kind of still in China from Hong Kong.

Well, not really, but it was the right decision.

2:10 pm: Another good question on the News Corp. (NWS) deal and the AdMob situation.

Pichette pointed out the the mobile ad market is “nascent,” naturally noting that Apple announced its recently announced iAd network.

In other words, let’s keep pointing to what Apple is up to to save our bacon with the government.

“Google wants every partner,” said Pichette about renewing the deal over MySpace, but added that economics have changed since the first one was done with the then-hot-and-now-not social networking site.

Translation: Don’t expect a big check, Rupert Murdoch!

More in-the-weeds questions, which provided some insight, but not much.

2:28 pm: Another China question about whether serving its results from Hong Kong is sustainable.

Yes, said Pichette.

More about search advertising innovations and targeting. Google is all over it, said Wojcicki in many, many, many more words.

This line of questioning continued until someone asked whether the reported tensions between Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin over China are behind his absence.

Juicy, but completely ridonkulous.

“Non,” laughed Pichette, answering in a jaunty way.

The lack of Schmidt, he added, was not a negative, but part of a review of stuff Google could do better. In fact, it was an innovation!

Mais oui or mais non, it was the most interesting news of the day.

“We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government,” Eric Schmidt told reporters at a media summit in Abu Dhabi. Google has decided not to publicize the status of the negotiations, he said, but “something will happen soon.”

Google said two months ago it would stop self-censoring its Chinese search engine and may shutter its offices in China following a major cyber-attack the company said it traced back to the country. The U.S. search giant has offered few details on the progress of talks between it and Chinese officials.

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A bold move for AMD (AMD), which has sustained seven straight quarters of losses, and one that could dramatically alter its fortunes. Indeed, right off the bat, AMD will push $1.2 billion in debt off its books and onto those of the The Foundry Co. “This is the biggest announcement in our history” said CEO chief executive, Dirk Meyer. “This will make us a financially stronger company, both in the near term and in the long term, as a result of being out from the capital expense burden we have had to bear.”

How did the Iranian computing center get its hands on 216 Opterons when the chips are embargoed from export to Iran? Well, it didn’t get them from AMD. “AMD fully complies with all United States export control laws, and all authorized distributors of AMD products have contractually committed to AMD that they will do the same with respect to their sales and shipments of AMD products,” the company said in a hastily released statement. “Any shipment of AMD products to Iran by any authorized distributor of AMD would be a breach of the specific provisions of their contracts with AMD.”

So, again, how did 216 Opterons find their way into Iran? Via the United Arab Emirates, perhaps? AMD did, after all, receive $622 million in funding from Mubadala Development Co., the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government.

Even with Abu Dhabi buying up shares of tech firms like Advanced Micro Devices and the bubbly euphoria in Silicon Valley’s Web 2.0 sector, the tech picture is getting less pretty, according to a report by Barron’s Eric Savitz on the downgrading of software stocks by Goldman Sachs.

Noting a softening in capital spending, Savitz quotes Goldman’s report that said, “with software a typically back-end loaded sale, if there is any concern on budgets in the early part of 2008, we would expect CIOs to hold off their purchases until later in the year.”

So Goldman cut estimates slightly on Adobe, Autodesk, BEA, BMC, CA, Check Point, Citrix, Cognos, CommVault, Informatica, Macrovision, McAfee, Oracle, Quest Software, Red Hat, RightNow, SAP, Secure Computing, Symantec and Tibco.

Could ad-supported or commerce-driven Web sites be next? To say nothing of the spate of pre-revenue–our kind way of saying none to speak of–Web 2.0 start-ups.

ALEXIS GLICK: “There’s some news coming across the tape right now. We’re seeing from The Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8% stake in AMD.”

PETER BARNES: “The big chip-maker, yup. And AMD and Intel battle back and forth, and so this is a very significant statement by Apple, Charles and Liz, is it not, that it’s going to buy into AMD, pick one of the two?”
[one-year charts of Apple and AMD]

CONTRIBUTOR CHARLES PAYNE: “Well, yeah, and AMD needs, uh–that’s real smart by Apple because AMD is in trouble right now. AMD has always had two problems: either it had a great product that was either sometimes superior to Intel but not the distribution, or it would have a terrible product that obviously they couldn’t compete. And they’re sort of in the middle right now–they haven’t had great product offerings per se recently, the stock has been really just sort of muddling along, so I gotta tell you, Peter, I think it’s a smart play by both companies to get involved with each other.”

GLICK: “That, oh, it’s not Apple. Let me just correct ourselves here. It is not Apple. [cross talk] Alright, I’m sorry, we got a little ahead of ourselves here on that. Um, Apple Dubai?” [sic]

Contrary to earlier reports, it was Abu Dhabi, not Apple (or “Apple Dubai”) that paid $622 million for an 8.1% stake in Advanced Micro Devices today. Orchestrated by the Mubadala Development Company (the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government), the deal will make the Persian Gulf emirate one of the chip-maker’s biggest shareholders. And it will give AMD, which posted a loss of $396 million for its third quarter, some much-needed financial relief as it faces increased competition from rival Intel.

Said Roger Kay, principal analyst with Endpoint Technology Associates, the deal is a “pretty good one for AMD. What AMD wants is access to short- and intermediate-term financing. Abu Dhabi represents a pretty good partner, since they’re not on the board and it’s not structured as debt.”

ALEXIS GLICK: “There’s some news coming across the tape right now. We’re seeing from The Wall Street Journal that Apple is buying an 8% stake in AMD.”

PETER BARNES: “The big chip-maker, yup. And AMD and Intel battle back and forth, and so this is a very significant statement by Apple, Charles and Liz, is it not, that it’s going to buy into AMD, pick one of the two?”
[one-year charts of Apple and AMD]

CONTRIBUTOR CHARLES PAYNE: “Well, yeah, and AMD needs, uh–that’s real smart by Apple because AMD is in trouble right now. AMD has always had two problems: either it had a great product that was either sometimes superior to Intel but not the distribution, or it would have a terrible product that obviously they couldn’t compete. And they’re sort of in the middle right now–they haven’t had great product offerings per se recently, the stock has been really just sort of muddling along, so I gotta tell you, Peter, I think it’s a smart play by both companies to get involved with each other.”

GLICK: “That, oh, it’s not Apple. Let me just correct ourselves here. It is not Apple. [cross talk] Alright, I’m sorry, we got a little ahead of ourselves here on that. Um, Apple Dubai?” [sic]

Contrary to earlier reports, it was Abu Dhabi, not Apple (or “Apple Dubai”) that paid $622 million for an 8.1% stake in Advanced Micro Devices today. Orchestrated by the Mubadala Development Company (the investment arm of the Abu Dhabi government), the deal will make the Persian Gulf emirate one of the chip-maker’s biggest shareholders. And it will give AMD, which posted a loss of $396 million for its third quarter, some much-needed financial relief as it faces increased competition from rival Intel.

Said Roger Kay, principal analyst with Endpoint Technology Associates, the deal is a “pretty good one for AMD. What AMD wants is access to short- and intermediate-term financing. Abu Dhabi represents a pretty good partner, since they’re not on the board and it’s not structured as debt.”