Whoever said youth was wasted on the young probably wasn't talking about the youngest members of our billionaires list.

The number 13 has long been considered unlucky by superstitious people around the globe. How fitting, then, that Bill Gates' reign as the world's richest person ends after his 13th year at the top.

One billion dollars is no longer enough. The price of admission to this, the 25th anniversary edition of the Forbes 400, is $1.3 billion, up $300 million from last year. The collective net worth of the nation's mightiest plutocrats rose $290 billion to $1.54 trillion.

Apple Computer elected Google chief executive Eric Schmidt to its board of directors Tuesday in a possible harbinger of an alliance between the technology titans.

The founders of Internet search engine Google have been named the Financial Times Men of the Year, the newspaper announced on December 23.

Google, the highly touted internet search firm that offered shares to the public this month, has weak corporate governance policies, according to a report by a shareholder service organization.

Google, the powerful but private internet firm, is challenging its rivals with a new free Web-based e-mail service that will offer users large storage capacity along with a search function.