Top 26 richest internet entrepreneurs
The internet has created some of the world's youngest billionaires, possibly in the shortest possible time scale, ever.
The richest are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the pair who set up Google in the late 1990s. They went from PhD students to (paper) billionaires in about five years.
The youngest is 25-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, founder of social networking site Facebook, who has returned to the billionaire list in 2010 after dropping out in 2009 amid the economic downturn.
As part of SuperPower - a season of programmes exploring the power of the internet - BBC News lists the top 26 richest internet entrepreneurs according to the latest Forbes ranking, released this week.
To reorder the table, click on the category names at the top.
INTERNET BILLIONAIRES
|
Name |
Age |
Comment |
Worth (bn) |
Website |
Nationality |
Larry Page
37
Co-founded Google
17.5
US
Sergey Brin
36
Co-founded Google
17.5
US
Jeff Bezos
46
Founded Amazon in a Seattle garage
12.3
US
Eric Schmidt
54
Google's grown-up chief executive
6.3
US
Masayoshi Son
52
Controls Japanese internet and telecom firm SoftBank
5.9
Japan
Pierre Omidyar
42
French-born immigrant launched online auction site in 1995
5.2
US
Hiroshi Mikitani
45
Runs Japan's leading online shopping mall
4.8
Japan
Charles Schwab
72
Brought online investing to the masses
4.7
US
Mark Zuckerberg
25
Founded Facebook in early 2004 while at Harvard university
4.0
US
Ma Huateng
38
Runs China's most popular online chat service
3.6
China
Robin Li
41
Co-founded China's most popular search site Baidu
3.5
China
Mark Cuban
51
Former bar tender who sold internet video website to Yahoo for 5.7bn
2.4
US
Jeffrey Skoll
45
Ebay's first president and full-time employee. Now a film producer
2.4
Canada
William Ding
38
Founded China's no.2 online game company. Once China's richest man
2.2
China
Andreas von Bechtolsheim
54
His initial $100,000 stake in Google made him a billionaire
2.0
Germany
David Cheriton
58
Stanford professor who introduced Google's co founders to each other
1.6
Canada
Shi Yuzhu
47
Founder of Giant Interactive, one of China's most successful online game companies
1.6
China
Yoshikazu Tanaka
33
Founded the second most popular social networking site in Japan - Gree
1.4
Japan
David Filo
43
Met Yahoo co-founder Yang at Stanford University
1.4
US
Margaret Whitman
53
Former eBay chief, now running for California govenor
1.3
US
Jerry Yang
41
Turned internet directory project into Yahoo portal
1.3
US
Marc Benioff
45
Held posts at Oracle and Apple before launching Salesforce.com
1.3
US
Todd Wagner
49
Co-founded broadcast.com with friend Mark Cuban
1.2
US
Peter Thiel
42
The first outside investor in Facebook 2004. He also co-founded paypal
1.2
US
Jack Ma
45
Founder, chairman and chief executive of internet business Alibaba
1.2
China
Stephen Case
51
Former Pizza Hut store manager who co-founded AOL
1.1
US