Guess who’s rich ?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin (both 34), tied for fifth on the new Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans released Thursday. They are each worth $18.5 billion.

That makes Page and Brin the youngest ever to crack the top 10 on the Forbes list. Their net worth has more than quadrupled since they first made the list in 2004, when their fortunes were “only” $4 billion each. And at the speed their fortunes are growing, the only question now is whether they can topple Bill Gates, 51, ranked first for the 14th straight year with $59 billion.

Brin and Page jumped from 12th and 13th respectively last year. And besides the wonder twins, the Mountain View search company had more employees than any other Silicon Valley company on the list:

• Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer, ranked 48th with $6.5 billion.

• Omid Kordestani, senior vice president of global sales and business development, ranked 204th, with $2.4 billion.

• Kavitark Shriram, a director, ranked 271st, with $1.8 billion.

And of course Google could well claim venture capitalist and board member John Doerr, who has sold huge amounts of Google stock. He tied for 276th with $1.8 billion.

The list is just one more nose-thumbing at Yahoo, whose first member can’t be found until 239, where founder David Filo lands with only $2 billion. Co-founder Jerry Yang comes in at 261 with $1.9 billion.

And then there’s Meg Whitman, top eBay Pez dispenser, ranked at a lowly 361 with $1.4 billion.

Speaking of the iPod mogul, Jobs was No. 56 on the list, worth $5.7 billion.

[ Via MercuryNews ]