He leaves with an estimated $5 million severance package.

The 35-year-old Blodget's tenure was alternately brilliant and controversial, with many of his picks making riches for Merrill clients and allied Net-stock followers, but in the end loosing many people much money as well. In the final tally, a majority of the 20 or so stocks he covered suffered a collapse of varying severity.

In the wake of the dot-com shakeout that mauled investors and smashed many a start-up, many were left floundering such now fading from memory names as Pets.com (remember the singing Sock Puppet), eToys and Webvan, which had been in the Blodget portfolio of coverage.

But things weren't always so bad.

First making a name for himself at CIBC Oppenheimer & Co. with his coverage of the then somewhat new-fangled Internet and e-commerce, Blodget hit the big time in a December 1998 call when he correctly forecasted a price target of $400 a share (pre-split) for Net retailer Amazon, up from its then price of around $240 a share.

Amazon hit this price target shortly there afterwards.

He was subsequently hired away by Merrill

By 2000 he was listed as the highest-ranked analyst in the financial business in a prominent annual survey by Institutional Investor magazine.

Along the way, the affable, well-spoken, and thoughtful Blodget became a favorite of the financial media as a source of quotes and industry background, and also appeared regularly on such venues as CNBC. Though bullish on Net stocks, to Blodget's credit he always warned that investing in this volatile sector was risky.

His star began to wane in March of 2000, when the Net bubble burst and reached its essential nadir in July of this year when he and Merrill were sued by an investor in a case that was ultimately settled by the company out of court.

The parting of Blodget and Merrill was an amicable one, however, with Blodget telling the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) in November when his leave taking became public that "it just seemed like a good time to pursue the next thing."

Blodget, who was married last month, said he plans to write a book on the Internet bubble for publisher Random House.

The gold rush and wipeout of the dot-coms aside, the Internet is still standing and continues to change much of the world's business landscape. Also various key Internet progeny -- Amazon, Yahoo , among others -- are still here and relatively thriving.

Also, it should be noted that companies such as Microsoft and AOL were also in the Blodget bailiwick.

Blodget's last call before departing, was the Friday upgrade of his forecast for Yahoo! Inc (NASDAQ:YHOO) wherein he revised his fourth-quarter revenue estimates for the company toward the high-end of the company's projected range of $160 to $180 million for the quarter. In a Friday research note, Blodget increased his Yahoo! forecast to $175 million for the final quarter up from the consensus view of $169 million, based on his assumption of a slight uptick -- 5 percent -- in online advertising revenue for the Net portal giant.

He did not, however, boost his Yahoo! earnings projection for the quarter, maintaining his forecast of one cent a share.

According to Merrill Lynch, continuing Internet and various tech-stock coverage handled by Blodget will be divided among software analyst Chris Shilakes who will assume coverage of Microsoft; analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, a media and entertainment expert, who will take on coverage of AOL Time Warner Inc.; along with various coverage by Justin Baldauf.