Amazon may be trying to step on Google's online advertising toes.

The online web shopping giant is producing software for placing ads online much like its long-time cyber nemesis does so well with Google Adwords, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

What will they do? Replace ads on its own pages that Google owns with its own.

Cyber Battle Heats Up

It was just two months ago that Google boosted its Adwords program with a new tool that allows companies to attach images to search-engine based advertisements.

Does Amazon want to spoil the fun? Maybe. Spoiling anything Google-related is in the Seattle-based Amazon's DNA.

Google, meanwhile, updated its Adwords with visual enhancements because officials felt users wanted something diverse, interactive and visual so that they can easily find what they are looking for within a sea of text, images and search results.

In December, Google had fired its own salvo at Amazon when it made available its Google Compute Engine (GCE). It pit Google against the likes of Amazon, IBM and Microsoft for a share of the public cloud computing market.

What would this do for digital marketers -- this potential Amazon online ad venture? As Karsten Weide, an analyst at researcher IDC, told the WSJ, "Marketers would love to have another viable option beyond Google and Facebook for their advertising."

Amazon Sponsored Links would be the new placement platform, insiders told the WSJ.

Emails to Amazon and Google from CMSWire were not immediately returned.