• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 8, 2012

Digging into the Forbes 2012 billionaire list released Wednesday for search engine execs and their friends, I found a few surprises. Bill Gates, however, isn't one of them.

Microsoft's Gates once again took the No. 2 spot with $61 billion. Others related to Microsoft fame also rank high on the list. Steve Ballmer sits with $15.7 billion at No. 44, and Paul Allen is at No. 48 with $14.2 billion.

Google Co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page come in at No. 24 and No. 25 -- both at $18.7 billion, respectively. Eric Schmidt, with $6.9 billion, sits at No. 138.

Mark Zuckerberg, at 27 years of age, is No. 35 -- worth $17.5 billion. But Zuck isn't the only billionaire that Facebook created. Dustin Moskovitz, age 27, who left Facebook in 2008 to start Asana, sits at No. 314 with $3.5 billion.

Another name that some may not recognize is Groupon investor Eric Lefkofsky. It seems the local daily deals site turned this 42-year-old into a rich man worth $2.9 billion.

Interestingly, Robin Li, Baidu CEO, took the No. 86 spot with $10.2 billion.

Others in the tech industry include Larry Ellison, worth $36 billion; Jeff Bezos, $18.4 billion; Michael Dell, $15.9 billion; Azim Premji, $15.9 billion; Pierre Omidyar, $6.7 billion; and Dietmar Hopp, $5.5 billion, among others. 

Elisabeth Badinter, author of the European book "The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women)", made it onto the Forbes Billionaire Newcomers 2012 list released Wednesday thanks to her "large stake in Publicis Groupe, the company founded in 1926 by her late father Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet.

Rubert Murdoch sits at No. 106 with $8.3 billion, and Jean-Claude Decaux, who founded outdoor ad agency JCDecaux in 1964, comes in at No. 216 with a mere $4.9 billion.