Fortune recently put out their list of the top 25 most powerful business people. Some are household brands while others you may know their companies but not their names. The top 5 are:

Chairman and CEO, Apple

During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, the Apple Inc. founder twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since. Along the way Jobs conceived of “desktop publishing,” gave the world the laser printer, and pioneered personal computer networks. As a side gig he bankrolled Pixar, which fostered the development of the technology and a brand-new business model for creating computer-animated feature films.

Chairman and CEO, News Corp.

News Corp. is a global force across the board – film, television, print, and even online (it owns the social networking site MySpace).

Murdoch wanted more, and he got it with the $5 billion acquisition of Dow Jones. It was the crowning achievement of a career that started in 1953 when he inherited control of two Australian newspapers. Murdoch expanded to Britain in the 1960s, the U.S. in the ’70s, and Asia in the 1990s. In Britain he owns the biggest tabloid, the Sun, and in the U.S. the New York Post and his Fox News Network are known for their take-no-prisoners attitude.

Chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs

Wall Street firms are taking multibillion-dollar write-offs. Titans of finance are losing their jobs. But through it all, Goldman Sachs keeps making money. The i-bank reported stellar third-quarter results: Earnings per share almost doubled from the prior year, and return on equity was 36.6%.

CEO; President, Products; President, Technology; Google

The ambitions of Brin and Page, Google’s 34-year-old founders, are pretty much boundless. Sure, they’ve already revolutionized – okay, massively disrupted – the advertising industry. But the billionaires aren’t stopping there. They’ve set their sights on altering how mobile telephones work, fixing climate change, utterly redefining the very nature of work, that sort of thing.

Chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

Of course it matters that Buffett has built Berkshire Hathaway into a massive holding company with interests ranging from underwear to private jets (2006 revenues: $98 billion). Of course it’s impressive that since 1965, Berkshire has performed more than twice as well as the S&P 500. Of course it’s amazing that Buffett has made millions from something as toxic as Enron bonds. And of course it is somehow unsurprising that he managed to help broker a deal between A-Rod and the New York Yankees.

Rounding out the list are: