AOL supremo Steve Case is the fourth most powerful man in the UK (just behind the prime minister, chancellor and Alan Greenspan, chairman of the American federal reserves), according to a Power 300 list compiled by Channel 4.

How come? Because of the Time Warner deal, stupid. That's right, the top man of AOL has usurped Billy Boy Gates in terms of influence, mostly because of the hold he will have over content delivery on the Internet in the next few years. Bill came in a respectable eighth.

Cisco CEO John Chambers won the award for highest new entry at 11, closely followed by Chris Gent (Vodafone) at 12. Hans Snook of Orange came in 58. Our favourite visionary Sir Peter Bonfield of BT came 26; the man that's supposed to be watching him, David Edmonds, came exactly 100 places behind at 126.

What about the big computer companies? IBM beats Apple beats Oracle beats Intel beats Sun beats HP beats Compaq.

The Internet visionaries? Good old Linus Torvalds is up there in 39, beating Tim Berners-Lee, who comes in at 75. Jeff Bezos (Amazon) is down in 138, ahead of Michael Dell at 149. Shawn Fanning of Napster infamy comes 189.

So there you have it. The full list of IT-based people in the list is given below. Of course, it's all bollocks really: the 300 placings were decided by a team of seven comprising two journalists, two marketing people, a doctor, a banker and a barrister.

Results

• 
  
• 4 Steve Case, Chairman and CEO, AOL
  
• 8 Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft
  
• 11 John Chambers, President and CEO, Cisco (highest new entry)
  
• 12 Chris Gent, chief executive, Vodafone
  
• 26 Sir Peter Bonfield, chief executive, BT
  
• 36 Louis Gerstner, chairman and CEO, IBM
  
• 38 Steve Jobs, interim CEO, Apple
  
• 39 Linus Torvalds, Linux originator
  
• 58 Hans Snook, chief executive, Orange
  
• 68 Larry Ellison, chairman and CEO, Oracle
  
• 72 Dr Andy Grove, chairman, Intel
  
• 75 Tim Berners-Lee, director, W3C
  
• 79 Stelios Haji-Ioannou, chairman, easyGroup
  
• 80 Jean-Marie Messier, chief executive, Vivendi
  
• 102 Charles Dunstone, MD, Carphone Warehouse
  
• 103 Tim Koogle, chairman and CEO, Yahoo!
  
• 105 Barclay Knapp, president and CEO, NTL
  
• 109 Scott McNealy, chairman and CEO, Sun
  
• 119 David Potter, chairman, Psion
  
• 126 David Edmonds, head of Oftel
  
• 130 Carly Fiorina, president and CEO, Hewlett-Packard
  
• 131 Ben Rosen, chairman and acting CEO, Compaq
  
• 138 Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon
  
• 149 Michael Dell, chairman and CEO, Dell
  
• 150 Meg Whitman, president and CEO, eBay
  
• 168 Sir Stanley Kalms, chairman, Dixons (Freeserve)
  
• 183 Jeff Hawkins, founder, Palm
  
• 189 Shawn Fanning, founder, Napster
  
• 212 Adam Singer, chief executive, Telewest
  
• 248 John Pluthero, chief executive, Freeserve
  
• 257 Pat Chapman-Pincher, senior VP, UUNet
  
• 299 Eva Pascoe, MD, Zoom.co.uk
  

Related Link

Channel 4's site (click on Power List 2000)