Tech Gazillionaires: The Top 13

Every time my PC would blow up and leave me frothing at the blue screen of death, I must confess that I would entertain revenge fantasies about what I might do if ever I got Bill Gates alone. But let bygones be bygones and hand it to Microsoft's co-founder; through a rare combination of technical acumen and entrepreneurial guts, Gates created one of the great corporations of modern times. Interestingly, he may ultimately be judged by history to have had a greater impact on peoples' lives due to his philanthropic work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison is another college dropout who made good - very good. According to Forbes, his personal fortune was the 3rd largest in the U.S., behind Gates and Warren Buffett. In the last decade, Oracle underwent a massive - and controversial - buying spree, spending billions to pick up business software companies to complement the company's flagship database technology. The bet paid off handsomely.

One of Google's co-founders, Larry Page will take over for Eric Schmidt as the company's CEO in a few months. Some have described the last 10 years as constituting the decade of Google. Page played a big role in that story, but he wasn't top banana. Now, he will be.

The other Google co-founder, Sergey Brin.

After briefly turning over the CEO reigns, Michael Dell came back to the company he founded. Second acts are often fraught but he's still punching the clock.

Talk about rough timing. Steve Ballmer took the baton from his old buddy Bill Gates and became Microsoft CEO a decade ago - a period in time bracketed by the dot com collapse and the Great Recession. Under Ballmer, Microsoft has pushed into a myriad number of new areas, like phones, digital music players and cloud computing. But still, Microsoft doesn't command the clout it once did. That's fed recurring rumors about board dissatisfaction and the possibility of a change in leadership.

Bill Gates' high school buddy and Microsoft co-founder, Paul Allen should engrave in gold Lou Gehrig's line about being the luckiest man alive. Ballmer had to leave Microsoft early in the company's history to deal with cancer. He beat the illness and then proceeded to reap a fortune due to his large ownership of pre-IPO shares in the company. Post-Microsoft, Allen's tallied an undistinguished investment track record with lots of busts. But to his credit, he did bankroll one heck of a sweet music museum for the city of Seattle.

In his private moments, Jeff Bezos must chuckle when he reads reports by sundry Wall Street analysts praising his stewardship at Amazon. Only a few years ago, many of the same people now kissing his butt were calling for Bezos' head. Not only has Amazon become the marquee name in e-retailing but Bezos smartly led the company into cloud computing long before the cloud became cool. The big uncertainty for the next 12 months surrounds Amazon's Kindle and competition from the iPad. Outside of that, Bezos has put together one of the more impressive scorecards of any CEO in techdom.

"I am Zuckerberg, hear me roar." That's how he should inscribe his business card, but now that Mark Zuckerberg has become a cultural icon, that wouldn't fit with the image Facebook's CEO wants to project. If the last 10 years marked the decade of Google, the next 10 may very well go down as the decade of Facebook. The company's still private and already valued at $50 billion. MySpace and other long-forgotten social networks don't even come up in serious conversations any more.

Mark Zuckerberg may be the second most fascinating person on the tech scene. Steve Jobs still remains Number One - by a long shot. Arrogant, willful, obnoxious - you've read all the criticisms from critics. Whatever. Since returning to Apple, Jobs has proved to be the most brilliant CEO in the tech industry. Others obviously participated in Apple's amazing revival but a dollop of hero worship here is perfectly in order. When Jobs finally does pack it in, Apple should bronze his office and leave it untouched for posterity.

Pierre Omidyar was a code guy who got rich when his company, which he renamed eBay, went public in 1998. Then he let Meg Whitman take over at CEO the same year.

Who says America's not a great country? Eric Schmidt was a washout as Novell's CEO. Then fate intervened when a headhunter called up to see whether he'd like to join a startup called Google. End of story. But it was a good fit; with Schmidt as CEO, Google's shares increased in value more than six-fold.

Schmidt last week announced his intention to step down as CEO in order to do the vision thing as executive chairman. He also received another $100 million in equity to smooth the transition.

You've doubtless heard of Moore's Law. That's Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Intel. A brilliant technologist and manager over a long and distinguished career, he's one of the tech industry's superstars. Whenever they talk about Silicon Valley entrepreneurship, think about this guy.