  Preferential attachment is a popular generative mechanism to explain the
widespread observation of power law distributed networks. We introduce an
alternative explanation for the phenomenon by allowing the link growth rates to
vary across the nodes according to a randomized Poisson process. The
distribution of rates, which reproduces the degree distribution of a
preferential attachment process (Yule process) is derived analytically. We
demonstrate with use of simulations that the degree distribution and growth
rates in single time intervals are similar for the random process and the
preferential attachment process. Structural differences are analyzed by
examining the joint degree distribution and network coreness.
