Yahoo! prepares to launch Adwords rival

Richard Koman at Silicon Valley Watch has confirmed that Yahoo! are testing their new its advertiser publishing program, to compete directly with Google.

Reporting in Confirmation: Yahoo is testing a Google Adsense competitor, he covers a lot of news already reported in our feature on Yahoo! celebrate 10 years - but adds that he has insider information on the project, which currently carries the acronym of YPN - almost certainly for “Yahoo! Publisher Network”.

As evidence of a second domain displaying the ads has been found, there are rumours that the project could be active within only a few weeks.

Yahoo! already have a live subdomain on Yahoo.com for the YPN project - http://publisher.yahoo.com/.

The move is very significant because Google derives most of its income from its AdWords/AdSense program, and Yahoo! is preparing to offer direct competition to that.