Economy of the United States Corporation, Apple Inc., Verizon, JPMorgan Chase, and Cardinal Health. In 2013, eight of the world's ten largest companies by market capitalization were American: Apple Inc., ExxonMobil, Berkshire Hathaway, Walmart, General Electric, Microsoft, IBM, and Chevron Corporation. According to Fortune Global 500 2011, the ten largest U.S. employers were Walmart, U.S. Postal Service, IBM, UPS, McDonald's, Target Corporation, Kroger, The Home Depot, General Electric, and Sears Holdings. Apple, Google, IBM, McDonald's, and Microsoft are the world's five most valuable brands in an index published by Millward Brown. A 2012 Deloitte report published in "STORES" magazine indicated that of the world's top
History of Google projected to raise as much as $4 billion. Google's initial public offering took place on August 19, 2004. A total of 19,605,052 shares were offered at a price of $85 per share. Of that, 14,142,135 (another mathematical reference as ≈ 1.4142135) were floated by Google and 5,462,917 by selling stockholders. The sale raised US$1.67 billion, and gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. Many of Google's employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited from the IPO because it owns 2.7 million shares of Google. The company was listed on the NASDAQ stock