Osama bin Laden cut himself off from direct access to the Internet during his final years in Pakistan as he attempted to elude the CIA. But the terror group he founded has been able to seize the power of the web to spawn an army of online followers who will prolong al-Qaida's war against the west long after his demise.

Al-Qaida's technological evolution illustrates how much the group has changed since the September 11, 2001, attacks and why it has flourished despite America's decade-long quest to crush it, using everything from drone strikes in Pakistan to secret prisons in Eastern Europe where bin Laden's lieutenants were interrogated.

The US scored its biggest victory in that war on May 2, when US Navy SEALs shot and killed the 54-year-old terror leader during a daring late-night helicopter raid not far from Pakistan's capital.

His death was undoubtedly a blow to al-Qaida, but the group's diffuse, virtual network lives on in militant chatrooms and on social media sites like Facebook and YouTube, where supporters carry forward bin Laden's message and plan the kind of bloody attacks that were his hallmark.