1990s tech titans beat young guns on Forbes' global rich list

Tech titan (age, country): wealth (company)

1. Carlos Slim Helu (Mexico, 71) $74 billion (Telmex, America Movil - phone companies)
2. Bill Gates (55, US): $56 billion (Microsoft)
4. Larry Ellison (66, US): $39.5 billion (Oracle)
24= Larry Page: (37, US) $28 billion (Google)
24= Sergey Brin: (37, US) $28 billion (Google)
30. Jeff Bezos: (47, US) $18.1 billion (Amazon)
36. Azim Premji (65, India), $16.8 billion (Wipro)
44. Michael Dell (46, US), $14.6 billion (Dell)
46. Steve Ballmer (54, US) $14.5 billion (Microsoft)
57. Paul Allen (58, US) $13 billion (Microsoft)
93. Ananda Krishnan (72, Malaysia) $9.5 billion (Maxis Communications - phone company)
95. Robin Li (42, China) $9.4 billion (Baidu - search engine)
110= Steve Jobs (56, US) $8.3 billion (Apple, Pixar)
110= Sunil Mittal (53, India) $8.3 billion (Bharti Enterprises - phone company)
120. Vladimir Yevtushenkov (62, Russia) $7.7 billion (telecoms, microelectronics)
136. Eric Schmidt (55, US) $7.3 billion (Google)
141. Hasso Plattner (67, Germany) $6.9 billion (SAP)
268. Gordon Moore* (82, US) $4 billion (Intel)

* Knows the score

Google's founders have enjoyed 10 years of soaring wealth - but they still don't come close to old schoolers like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, who shot to prominence during the 1990s tech boom on Forbes' latest rich list.

A few young guns do make strides. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for exammple, moves ahead of Microsoft co-founder turned superyacht playboy Paul Allen.

But elsewhere the oldies rule. It seems in terms of tech booms, there's still been nothing like the dot.com rush.

Bill Gates has slipped from number one to number two on Forbes annual ranking of the world's billionaires.

The reason is no secret - the Microsoft co-founder has now given away tens of billions to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Without the philanthropy, Mr Gates would now be worth around $US86 billion - comfortably ahead of the pack.

As it is, the top slot has been taken by Mexican mogul Carlos Slim - the man who has parlayed the privatisation of his country's monopoly phone company into a gigantic, far-ranging empire and a $74 billion forutne (another key lesson of the Forbes global list - it's hard to go wrong if you find yourself in control of a former state telco monopoly).

Among many other pursuits, Mr Slim has shaken down the struggling New York Times, loaning its owner $US200 million at a ruinious 14% interest rate. And they say nobody's doing well out of publishing's move to online.

See above for a summary of tech titans on Forbes' list (and here fo rthe full version; figures $US):