Fortune Global 500 - Fortune 2012 list

The rankings, which have been released by the magazine at its website, appear in the July 23, 2012, issue of the magazine.

The following is the list of top 10 companies, as published on 9 July 2012. It is based on the companies' fiscal year ended on or before 31 March 2012.^[2]

Rank	Company	Country	Industry
1	Royal Dutch Shell	Netherlands†	Petroleum
2	Exxon Mobil	United States	Petroleum
3	Wal-Mart Stores	United States	Retail
4	BP	United Kingdom	Petroleum
5	Sinopec	China	Petroleum
6	China National Petroleum	China	Petroleum
7	State Grid	China	Power
8	Chevron	United States	Petroleum
9	ConocoPhillips	United States	Petroleum
10	Toyota Motor	Japan	Automobiles

^† While Fortune lists Shell as a Dutch company, the company itself asserts that it is both Dutch and British.^[3]

[edit]Breakdown by country

This is the list of the top 17 countries, with the most Global 500 companies.^[4]

Rank	Country	Companies
1	United States	132
2	China	73
3	Japan	68
4	France	32
4	Germany	32
6	United Kingdom	26
7	Switzerland	15
8	South Korea	13
9	Netherlands	12
10	Canada	11
11	Italy	9
11	Australia	9
13	Brazil	8
13	India	8
13	Spain	8
16	Russia	7
17	Taiwan	6

148 companies are located in the European Union.

[edit]Profitability

This is the list of top 10 most profitable corporations in the world as published on 9 July 2012. It is based on the companies' fiscal year ended on or before 31 March 2012.^[5]

Rank	Company	Country	2011 profit in USD
1	Gazprom	Russia	$44.4 billion
2	Exxon Mobil	United States	$41.6 billion
3	Industrial and Commercial Bank of China	China	$41.6 billion
4	Royal Dutch Shell	Netherlands†	$30.9 billion
5	Chevron	United States	$26.9 billion
6	China Construction Bank	China	$26.1 billion
7	Apple	United States	$25.9 billion
8	BP	United Kingdom	$25.7 billion
9	BHP Billiton	Australia ††	$23.6 billion
10	Microsoft	United States	$23.2 billion

^† While Fortune lists Shell as a Dutch company, the company itself asserts that it is both Dutch and British.

^†† While Fortune lists BHP Billiton as an Australian company, the company is a Dual Listed Company (DLC) comprising BHP Billiton Limited and BHP Billiton Plc. BHP Billiton was created through the DLC merger of BHP Limited (now BHP Billiton Limited) and Billiton Plc (now BHP Billiton Plc), which was concluded on 29 June 2001. The headquarters of BHP Billiton Limited, and the global headquarters of the combined BHP Billiton Group, are located in Melbourne, Australia. BHP Billiton Plc is located in London, United Kingdom. Both companies have identical Boards of Directors and are run by a single management team. Shareholders in each company have equivalent economic and voting rights in both companies. Hence, it has been referred to as an Anglo-Australian company in many places.

Courtesy: Wiki

Wet Phone? How To Dry Out Your Phone and Waterproof It

We humans can't get enough water during the summer, but for our gadgets, on the other hand, there may not be a bigger enemy. Sadly, you may already know what we mean if you've landed at this article.

Maybe your phone fell in the pool. Maybe it fell in the toilet, or maybesomeone spilled a large glass of water on the dinner table. Whatever it is, we're deeply sorry. But not all might be lost.

Below we have put together a list of ways to help you resurrect your wet phone and prevent accidents from happening in the future. All these methods are highly dependent on what sort of phone or gadget you have and how bad the water damage is, but let's dive right in!

DRY OUT TIP #1

ABC News

Bowl of Rice

Of course, the first thing you should do with your wet phone is dry it off. Yes, it sounds obvious, but really dry it off. Get a towel and sop up all the water you can. You can even use a straw. (Okay, don't do that if you dropped your phone in the toilet.) Do not -- we repeat, do not -- use a blow dryer; the heat can damage the phone.

If you have a phone or a gadget with a cover that comes off, take it off, and take out the battery, the SIM card, and anything else that can easily be removed. Dry all those things off.

The next step might seem a bit crazy, but get a bowl and fill it up with rice. Yep, regular rice from the supermarket. Bury your phone in the bowl and keep it in there for 12 to 24 hours. Rice absorbs moisture and has long been used as a wet-gadget-saving measure.

It doesn't always work. While the rice method saved a wet Samsung Android phone of ours, it didn't do the same for an iPhone that had been dropped in the toilet. Again, all these methods are highly dependent on what sort of phone or gadget you have and how bad the water damage is.

Marissa Mayer: Meet Yahoo's New CEO

Today Marissa Mayer takes over as Yahoo's new CEO. She comes directly from Google, and if you believe the technology pundits, she provides the hope and capability to turn the company around.

"She comes into Yahoo with a massive and impressive pedigree, a personal agenda to showcase she was the more qualified CEO candidate, and she'll go a long way toward creating a belief that Yahoo can be turned around," Rob Enderle, a longtime industry analyst and head of the Enderle Group, told ABC News.

"She's a proven manager at scale. She knows how to run these companies at scale. There aren't that many product managers in our industry who can manage at scale," Marc Andreeseen, who leads one of the top venture capital firms in the world, told Business Insider.

So who is this woman who has both the tech community and Wall Street all giddy?

Wait, who is Marissa Mayer again?

Monday Marissa Mayer was the vice president of location and local services at Google. She was one of the search giant's top executives. Today she started as the CEO of Yahoo. She is 37 years old and is pregnant with her first child.

She is pregnant?

Yes, Mayer confirmed to Fortune that she is pregnant. Additonally, according totechnology site AllThingsD, the Yahoo board didn't even consider her pregnancy part of the conversation.

Is she the first woman CEO of Yahoo?

No. Carol Bartz led the company from 2009 to 2011. Mayer has been considered one of the most powerful women in technology and business for years, earning her spots on lists from Forbes and Fortune to Glamour magazine.

How much experience did she have at Google?

A heck of a lot. She joined Google in 1999 as the 20th employee, and she was the company's first female engineer. Over the 13-year span she engineered and designed products, and led whole divisions. She has been described as a strong product visionary and perfectionist when it comes to product design.

What products did she work on at Google?

Again, a heck of a lot. She helped worked on Google Search in the early years as well as Google News, Gmail and most recently Google Maps. This "Nightline" interview with Mayer from 2007, when she was vice president of Google Search and user experience, reveals the extent to which Mayer was involved in product decisions.

What's her educational background?

Mayer majored in engineering at Stanford University, where she earned an M.S. in computer science and B.S. in symbolic systems.

What other technology companies has she invested in?

Mayer was an early investor in Square, a mobile payment company started by the co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. She is also an investor in Airtime, Minted, uBeam, and sits on the board of Walmart. Why go to Yahoo from Google?

Mayer hasn't directly answered that question but said in an interview with the New York Times that she "had an amazing time at Google." She also added that "it was a reasonably easy decision" as Yahoo is "one of the best brands on the Internet."

What does she plan to focus on at Yahoo?

According to that same interview with the New York Times, she plans to focus on the company's leading products, including email, finance and sports. She also wants to focus on mobile and video broadband.

Can she do it?

We can't answer that yet, but given the fact that Yahoo has had five CEOs in the past five years, Mayer has a lot of work to do and a big ship to steer. AsAndreesen told Business Insider, "The thing about turnarounds is that they take time. It's three to five years to do the job. So one of the things she needs is for the board to support her for that period of time."

Google shutting down a bunch of projects (Spring cleaning in summer)

iGoogle, Google Video, Chatback, Google Mini, and the Symbian Search App

Technology creates tremendous opportunities to improve people's lives. But to make the most of them, we need to focus—or we end up doing too much and not having the impact we strive for. So last fall we started a spring clean, and since then we've closed or combined more than 30 products. Today we're announcing a few more closures. Here's a summary of the changes we'll be making:

• The Google Mini has been an important part of our Enterprise Search offering since it was first introduced in 2005. It's had a good run, but beginning July 31 we're discontinuing the product because its functionality can be better provided by products like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search. We will of course continue to provide technical support to Mini customers for the duration of their contracts, and will reach out to them shortly with more details.
• Google Talk Chatback allowed websites to embed a Google Talk widget so that they could engage with their visitors. It's now outdated, so we're turning off Chatback and encouraging websites to use the Meebo bar.
• Google Video stopped taking uploads in May 2009. Later this summer we'll be moving the remaining hosted content to YouTube. Google Video users have until August 20 to migrate, delete or download their content. We'll then move all remaining Google Video content to YouTube as private videos that users can access in the YouTube video manager. For more details, please see our post on the YouTube blog.
• On November 1, 2013, iGoogle will be retired. We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today's web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips. With modern apps that run on platforms like Chrome and Android, the need for iGoogle has eroded over time, so we'll be winding it down. Users will have 16 months to adjust or export their data.
• We'll soon be retiring our Symbian Search App to focus our efforts on our mobile web search experience. We encourage you to go to www.google.com and make it your homepage or bookmark it. Switching from the app to the web experience will enable users to make the most of the web-wide improvements we make for search all the time.

Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users. Streamlining our services enables us to focus on creating beautiful technology that will improve people's lives.

Courtesy: Google