The random planar graph process

We consider the following variant of the classical random graph process introduced by Erd?s and Rényi. Starting with an empty graph on n vertices, choose the next edge uniformly at random among all edges not yet considered, but only insert it if the graph remains planar. We show that for all ε > 0, with high probability, θ(n²) edges have to be tested before the number of edges in the graph reaches (1 + ε)n. At this point, the graph is connected with high probability and contains a linear number of induced copies of any fixed connected planar graph, the first property being in contrast and the second one in accordance with the uniform random planar graph model. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 2008