3. Jeff Bezos

Company: Amazon

Last Year’s Ranking: 6.

Stage of Global Conquest: Stores are struggling to get consumers to use their cash and credit cards, but Amazon’s stuff is still flying off its virtual shelves. In the midst of the economic meltdown late last year, the e-commerce giant said it had recorded its “best ever” holiday season. The biggest worry for the company is that it will struggle as consumers abandon physical versions of books, CDs, and movies for digital ones, but so far (see: Kindle), Bezos seems to be handling the switch ably.

Big Purchase: Amazon spent some $900 million in July to buy Zappos.com, a Web-based shoe seller.

Man-of-the-People Move: Bezos, 45, logged a week working at an Amazon distribution center in Lexington, Kentucky.

Mogul Miscue: Amazon removed illegal copies of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four from customers’ Kindle e-book devices and refunded their purchase price—without telling anyone. Bezos later apologized publicly, calling the move “stupid ... thoughtless and painfully out of line with our principles.”

Year Ahead Projection: ↗

4. Warren Buffett

Company: Berkshire Hathaway

Last Year’s Ranking: 5.

Stage of Global Conquest: How bad was the market meltdown? Bad enough for the planet’s greatest investor to suffer only his second down year in more than four decades, a result that prompted some critics to charge that Buffett had lost his touch.

Big Bold Bets: During the height of the global economic crisis, the 79-year-old investor almost single-handedly calmed the markets by making billion-dollar investments in Goldman Sachs ($5 billion), General Electric ($3 billion), and Swiss Re ($2.6 billion). Berkshire’s Goldman stake is now worth more than $9 billion.

Latest Stab at Immortality: The Oracle of Omaha is set to star in The Secret Millionaires Club, an online cartoon series aimed to help children learn about finance.

Little Buddy: Wang Chuanfu. Since investing $230 million in the Chinese entrepreneur’s high-tech company, BYD, last September, Buffett has seen his stake jump by more than 300 percent.

Should be Embarrassed About: Berkshire lost more than $6.8 billion last year trading credit-default swaps and other derivative contracts, instruments Buffett had derided as “financial weapons of mass destruction” in his 2003 annual letter to shareholders.

Quote: “Investors of all stripes were bloodied and confused, much as if they were small birds that had strayed into a badminton game.”

Year Ahead Projection: →

5. Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin

Company: Google

Last Year’s Ranking: 3.

Stage of Global Conquest: It’s hard to believe that Google turned 11 years old in September. Its stock has fallen from a peak of $714 in late 2007 to around $445 today, wiping out nearly $20 billion in paper wealth for its leadership triumvirate. The company has laid off 10,000 contract workers and even cut back on the operating hours at its famed free cafeterias. And Silicon Valley types gossip about the “Google brain drain,” as disillusioned talent has finally begun to defect from the vaunted company. Nonetheless, Google is still doing better than pretty much everyone else in the battered economy. And as the Obama administration revived the long-forgotten notions of anti-trust, Google’s dominance became the subject of three separate federal investigations, including one into allegations that the Google and Apple boards have become overly entwined, which prompted Schmidt, 53, to relinquish his seat on Apple’s board.

Was Anyone Really Fooled?: In response to the probes by the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission, Google launched an unpersuasive P.R. campaign to portray the Internet giant as vulnerable and not evil.

Diplomatic Relations: Washington’s interest in regulating Google is countered by the company’s close ties to the new administration: Schmidt serves on Obama’s advisory council on science and technology and sat next to the president during a C.E.O. powwow in February. Google’s former head lobbyist Andrew McLaughlin is now the nation’s “deputy chief technology officer.” Google was the third-biggest source of corporate donations to Obama’s campaign, and 15 Google executives donated $166,000 for the inauguration.

---

For a complete list of the top 100 power players, please click here.