Internet Billionaire$ from the BBC

SuperPower: Visualising the internet

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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 programmers exploring the power of the internet - BBC News lists the top 26 richest internet entrepreneurs according to the latest Forbes ranking, released this week.

INTERNET BILLIONAIRES: The table can be re-ordered by clicking on any of the column headings
Name	Age	Comment	Worth (billions of US $)	Website	Nationality
PageLarry Page	37	Co-founded Google	17.5	Google	US
BrinSergey Brin	36	Co-founded Google	17.5	Google	US
BezosJeff Bezos	46	Founded Amazon in a Seattle garage	12.3	Amazon	US
SchmidtEric Schmidt	54	Google's grown-up chief executive	6.3	Google	US
SonMasayoshi Son	52	Controls Japanese internet and telecom firm SoftBank	5.9	Softbank	Japan
OmidyarPierre Omidyar	42	French-born immigrant launched online auction site in 1995	5.2	Ebay	US
MikitaniHiroshi Mikitani	45	Runs Japan's leading online shopping mall	4.8	Rakuten	Japan
SchwabCharles Schwab	72	Brought online investing to the masses	4.7	Schwab	US
ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg	25	Founded Facebook in early 2004 while at Harvard university	4.0	Facebook	US
HuatengMa Huateng	38	Runs China's most popular online chat service	3.6	Tencent	China
LiRobin Li	41	Co-founded China's most popular search site Baidu	3.5	Baidu	China
CubanMark Cuban	51	Former bar tender who sold internet video website to Yahoo for 5.7bn	2.4	Broadcast	US
SkollJeffrey Skoll	45	Ebay's first president and full-time employee. Now a film producer	2.4	Ebay	Canada
DingWilliam Ding	38	Founded China's no.2 online game company. Once China's richest man	2.2	Netease	China
BechtolsheimAndreas von Bechtolsheim	54	His initial $100,000 stake in Google made him a billionaire	2.0	Google	Germany
CheritonDavid Cheriton	58	Stanford professor who introduced Google's co founders to each other	1.6	Google	Canada
YuzhuShi Yuzhu	47	Founder of Giant Interactive, one of China's most successful online game companies	1.6	Giant	China
TanakaYoshikazu Tanaka	33	Founded the second most popular social networking site in Japan - Gree	1.4	Gree	Japan
FiloDavid Filo	43	Met Yahoo co-founder Yang at Stanford University	1.4	Yahoo	US
WhitmanMargaret Whitman	53	Former eBay chief, now running for California govenor	1.3	Ebay	US
YangJerry Yang	41	Turned internet directory project into Yahoo portal	1.3	Yahoo	US
BenioffMarc Benioff	45	Held posts at Oracle and Apple before launching Salesforce.com	1.3	Salesforce	US
WagnerTodd Wagner	49	Co-founded broadcast.com with friend Mark Cuban	1.2	Broadcast	US
ThielPeter Thiel	42	The first outside investor in Facebook 2004. He also co-founded paypal	1.2	Paypal	US
MaJack Ma	45	Founder, chairman and chief executive of internet business Alibaba	1.2	Alibaba	China
CaseStephen Case	51	Former Pizza Hut store manager who co-founded AOL	1.1	Aol	US