Advanced Micro Devices made a rare profit in the fourth quarter, due in no small part to a big antitrust settlement from Intel, as well as a recovering PC market.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker also reported a profit, excluding the Intel payment of $1.25 billion, thanks to a resurgence in demand for personal computers in the fourth quarter. Overall, holiday PC purchasing was strong, lifting both Intel and AMD, in no small part due to the launch of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

AMD reported revenue of $1.6 billion, up 42 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008. Net income was $1.1 billion, or $1.52 a share, compared to a loss of $1.4 billion, or $2.34 a share, a year earlier. The fourth quarter 2009 result includes the favorable one-time Intel payment, which amounted to $1.57 a share.

For the year, AMD posted revenue of $5.4 billion, down from $5.8 billion a year earlier. Net income for the year was $304 million, compared to a loss of $3.1 billion in 2008. (more…)

While crowing about Google’s strong fourth quarter earnings during a conference call this afternoon, the search giant’s executives looked back on 2009 as a whole. While Google seemed to be elbowing its way into many new markets this year, Vice President of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg actually emphasized that Google benefited by deciding to “double down” on its core products like search.

Sure, Google announced new, ambitious products like Chrome OS, Wave, and free turn-by-turn driving directions, but Rosenberg pointed out that the company ended 2008 by burying its virtual world service Lively, then began 2009 by more-or-less killing six products including Dodgeball and Google Notebook. For a company that previously boasted about morphing products rather than killing them, that was a pretty significant shift, and suggested that even as it expands, Google is casting a more critical eye on different products.

Rosenberg described this as the “more wood behind fewer arrows approach,” and added, “I think it worked for 2009.”

Moving forward, chief executive Eric Schmidt said Google will continue its “70-20-10″ spending approach — 70 percent of its spending will go to established businesses like search, 20 percent to newer businesses like mobile that fuel search, and 10 percent to long-term investments. He noted that in recent months Google has been averaging one acquisition per month, and said we can expect that level to continue in the future. (more…)

If you’ve ever tried to listen in on a Google earnings call on the web, it’s kind of a pain. That’s especially true if you use a Mac because Google insist that you use either Real Player (which is awful on the Mac) or Windows Media Player (which doesn’t work on a Mac). Of course, you could always call into an actual phone number, but who does that anymore? Thankfully, for its Q4 2009 earnings being announced this afternoon, Google has made things easier. (more…)

Google Just announced earnings for the fourth quarter. Revenues were up 17 percent to $6.7 billion, while non-GAAP earnings increased 35 percent to $2.2 billion, or 6.79 per share. That is well above the analyst consensus of $6.50 a share. The slides are above.

Revenues for the full year ended up being $23.65 billion, up from $21.8 billion in 2008. Net income for 2009 was $6.5 billion.

Google’s revenue in the quarter was broken down 66 percent (or $4.4 billion) from its own sites and 31 percent (or $2 billion) from AdSense revenues across its advertising network. The other 3 percent came from licensing and other businesses. While the Google’s ad revenue on its own sites increased 16 percent, AdSense revenues grew an even faster 21 percent.

Paid clicks on ads were up 13 percent annually and up 9 percent from the third quarter of 2009. The average cost per click was up 5 percent annually, and 2 percent sequentially. (more…)

The Bay Area News Project, a non-profit media organization providing hyper local news to the San Francisco area, has announced a deal to provide news to the New York Times. The content will be used for The New York Times’ local San Francisco editions on Friday and Saturday. The deal with the New York Times has been rumored to be in negotiations but was officially announced today.

The project, which was announced last year, has received $5 million in funding from financier Warren Hellman. The site, which has a staff of nearly 30 journalists, is also supported by KQED-FM (Though it appears that deal has ended) and University of California, Berkeley?s graduate school of journalism. The Project as also brought on former McKinsey partner Lisa Frazier as CEO and Jonathan Weber, the co-founder and editor in chief of The Industry Standard, as the site’s editor in chief. (more…)

Plenty of ink has been spilled detailing how wildly succesful Apple’s App Store has been, which now counts well over 100,000 applications. However, this huge number of apps presents a challenge: it’s hard to actually find interesting new apps when there are so many to choose from. Apple does its best to highlight quality applications in the store, and it offers a Genius feature, but that often leaves something to be desired. AppStoreHQ is a site that’s looking to help make app recommendations using a new source of data: Twitter. The site generates recommendations based on who is tweeting about iPhone apps, and can generate recommendations for you based on your own tweets.

The site looks at Twitter’s public stream, checking tweets for links back to the App Store. Every time someone links to an app, they treat that as a vote from that user. When you visit the site’s homepage, you can browse through the apps that are currently the hottest on Twitter or on the web (the latter is determined by apps with the most blog post mentions). Or, if you want personalised recommendations, you can tweet about an app or two that you enjoy. The one catch is that you have to include one of a few keywords like “iPhone” or “AppStoreHQ” in your tweet, otherwise the system won’t catch it. The service only resolves links with these keywords, because it would take a prohibitive amount of processing power to follow every short URL and Link to see if they’re linking to an iPhone app. (more…)

Twitter has apparently just implemented a change that may well have a massive impact on the service. The company has apparently revamped its highly controversial Suggested User List, in favor of a list of Suggestions based on topic. That’s big news in and of itself (before Twitter’s suggestions were not categorized), but there’s also apparently no way to add all of these users to your account at once. In other words, members of the SUL will likely see their user growth counts take a big hit.

We’re still playing around with the new suggestion feature, but here’s what we’ve gathered so far. First, it looks like members of the old SUL have been transitioned over to the new format. There are twenty categories, covering everything from Technology to Cuisine (there’s also sections for Staff Picks, as well as a spell list of Staff Picks for Haiti). Clicking on one of these categories will bring up 20 recommended Twitter users. It appears that the order of the users presented has some randomness to it ? I’ve had the order of the Technology section switch a few times as I played around with it. (more…)

Established in 1985, the Harbin Ice and Snow Festival is held annually and lasts from January 5th to February. The capital city of the Heilongjiang Province of China, Harbin holds the greatest ice artwork festival, attracting hundreds of thousands of local people and visitors from around the world.

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Michael Mace is a principal at Rubicon Consulting.

I wish I knew the inside story on Google’s recent confrontation with the Chinese government. At first Google’s announcement looked like a principled, well thought-out stand in a long behind-the-scenes dispute. But as more details have emerged, it has started to look as if Google didn’t think through the consequences outside of its core search business. In the mobile market, those consequences could be significant. Here’s why…

Google’s Android OS has been gaining enormous support among mobile operators and handset vendors because it was viewed as the most feasible alternative to total domination by Apple. All of the other OS options had nasty baggage — Microsoft was viewed as both controlling and unable to create demand, Symbian was seen as Nokia’s pet, and the other flavors of Linux were all below critical mass.

In contrast, Google seemed technically competent, vendor-neutral, and capable of attracting users. (By the way, it says something about Apple’s growing power in the mobile industry that a company as controlling as Google was seen as the safe partner; it’s kind of like cozying up to a kodiak bear to escape a tiger.) (more…)

If you?re a frequent border-hopper, you may want to check out Truphone. The company announced a service today called ?Local Anywhere? that it says can slash up to 90 percent off cell phone bills by providing local voice, data and text rates when traveling abroad.

The service is made possible by a single ?smart? SIM card that offers local rates in countries where Truphone operates (don?t worry, fellow Americans — SIM card explanation coming below). As of today the service is only available in the U.S. and the U.K., but the company plans to expand across Europe and to long-haul destinations like Australia, Hong Kong and South Africa in the coming year.

The solution is aimed at jet setters who tend to rack up big roaming charges traveling abroad. For example, an AT&T subscriber roaming in the U.K. can pay between 99 cents and $1.29 per minutes, depending on their calling plans, but Truphone says they?ll pay as low as 12 cents per minute with the Local Anywhere. (more…)