Forbes magazine has published its annual list of the world's billionaires, headed as usual by Bill Gates ($56bn) and his bridge partner Warren Buffett ($52bn) -- and they are also the two people who have given the most money away. Oracle's Lawrence Ellison is in 11th place with $21.5bn, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen in 19th with $18bn. (Last year, Allen was 6th richest with $22bn.)
However, Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin are already equal 26th, with $16.6bn each. They have overtaken Michael Dell (26th, $15.8bn), Steve Ballmer (31st, $15bn), Rupert Murdoch (73rd, $9bn), eBay's Pierre Omidyar (76th, $8.8bn), Google's Eric Schmidt (116, $6.2bn), Steve Jobs (132nd, $5.7bn), Richard Branson (230th, $3.8bn), Intel's Gordon Moore (243rd, $3.6bn), Yahoo's David Filo (369th, $2.5bn) and Yahoo's Jerry Yang (432nd, $2.2bn).
There are 946 billionaires on the list.
The list may have a new leader next year. Forbes says:
Bill Gates, the world's richest man for 13 years, and his pal Warren Buffett, who holds the No. 2 spot despite enormous charitable donations, are quickly losing ground to Mexico's most-monied man, Carlos Slim Helú. Helú's net worth is up an astonishing $19 billion this year--the single biggest one-year gain in a decade--and is now just $7 billion shy of Gates and $3 billion less than Buffett.
"The son of a Lebanese immigrant, Slim made his first fortune in 1990 when he bought fixed line operator Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) in a privatization."
Gates could, of course, have a much greater paper wealth if Microsoft's shares went up again. During Bubble 1.0, Gates was worth $100bn.
Update 1: Valleywag has posted The Googolaires, which reckons that "About one third of California's technology fortunes are built on Google's soaring stock." That's including people like venture capitalist John Doerr, and Andy Bechtolsheim, who was a co-founder of Sun Microsystems.
Update 2: There's a Guardian Unlimited story, Super-rich get richer, plus an updated version -- $49bn Mexican jumps up list of world's richest -- from Saturday's paper.
