No way. This is accounting fraud, plain and simple. It was a massive cash kick-back from a supplier that was disguised as regular earnings or revenue to keep Wall St. expectations and Dell's stock price up.
Who knows how much Dell and other managers in the know profited from this by cashing out stock or options for years while the rest of the investing public held the bag? They should probably be in jail.
But the point was that Intel was paying them, presumably in order to not do something that would harm Intel. So it makes sense to keep accepting that payment until the costs exceed the benefits.
Are you contending that Dell would not have recouped any of that rebate money by working with AMD? If so, why would Intel pay so much? In theory, just paying Dell $1 would be enough.
Who knows how much Dell and other managers in the know profited from this by cashing out stock or options for years while the rest of the investing public held the bag? They should probably be in jail.