News Microsoft buys Skype for £5.2 billion

1 billion = 1,000,000,000

In the US & the UK.

 

yeah it's 1000 x a million.. like a million is 1000 x a thousand

thousand is 1000 x 1.. ect.. easier way to look at it.. I dunno who comes up with these terms.. now days peeps need spell check to even spell anything

imagine how much trouble we'd be in 20 years asking someone to add something up without a calculator!

that would be pretty nice to have skype integrated into windows

 

You might be confused about the exchange rate according to the latest I could dig up 1 US dollar = 0.6066 British pounds sterling.

 

Actually I think you'll find the British way is much simpler: a million is a thousand times a thousand, a billion is a million times a million. Although I think in most areas the US billion is now widely accepted as standard. Why don't we just call them GigaDollars and leave it at that?

 

it's also much harder to be a billionaire with the british way probably why most favour the US system hehe

thanks for all the responses guys from now on i will assume a billion is the US way unless otherwise specified - i figured it would but but on a british site you just never know. though not everyone's memory and brain is as damned weird as mine of course

 

Actually the 'US' way has been the standard in this country for quite some time now, probably decades.

 

Goodbye skype for android???

 

Yep, a billion = 10^9 has been the standard here for ages now. It's more consistent that way if the index increases by 3 i.e. thousand = 10^3, million = 10^6, billion = 10^9

 

As long as they keep PC to PC calls free I'm happy.

Just scared to see if this ever gets anywhere near GFWL.

You mean the little check box that you just uncheck? Those are pretty common.

 

i wonder if microsoft knew that they could download it for free

 

Sorry, re: the billion thing.

I am sure the American 'billion' was only 100K, but the British billion was correct according to the decimal system, 1,000K. I seem to remember as a kid (quite some time ago....) getting a little confused that £1 was $1.50 but $1billion was only £100million.

 

Skype + .net = Skynet.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUU-