By Linda Taaffe

Los Altos may rank as one of the wealthiest communities in the United States, but only one resident made the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans last week. Jerry Yang, 34, is the nation’s 162nd wealthiest resident, according to the magazine’s annual list. He tied with 16 other billionaires, including another Bay Area resident — San Francisco’s Robert Allen Naify of United Artists Theaters.

The Stanford University graduate and co-creator of the Internet search engine Yahoo! Inc. is worth $1.4 billion. His partner, Mountain View resident David Filo, 37, ranked No. 126 on the list with a net worth of $1.6 billion.

Both, who nearly tripled their net worth over the past year, are among the wealthiest and youngest on the list. Only 31-year-old Daniel Morton Ziff of New York, who inherited his fortune, is younger than Yang.

Yang, a Taiwanese native raised in San Jose, is a member of Yahoo!’s board of directors. Filo, a Louisiana native, serves as a key technologist, directing the technical operations behind the company’s global network of Web properties.

The two college friends started Yahoo! as a hobby nine years ago to help them keep track of various sites on the Internet. They launched Yahoo! in 1995 as the first online navigational guide to the Web. Yang and Filo say the company has since evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and make purchases. Yahoo! is the Internet’s leading global consumer and business services company, reaching more than 237 million unique users in 25 countries and 13 languages, according to the company’s Web site.

Only those worth $600 million or more made this year’s list, which included 36 Peninsula residents. Bill Gates toped the list with $46 billion.