A Danish, Norwegian, Swedish ("biljon" ) billion is 10^12, a US billion is 10^9. It's utterly confusing sometimes, and this is one of the fewer cases where US metric makes much more sense.
US: million, billion, trillion. 10^6, 10^9, 10^12
Skandinavia: million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion, trilliard 10^6, 10^9, 10^12, etc
PS: I don't know about the rest of the world.
Google correctly translates the Danish original "milliard" to the US "billion". A 5 (Danish) billion kroner fine would be higher than our total GDP.
> this is one of the fewer cases where US metric makes much more sense.
Don't see that. A bi-llion is million million. A tri-llion is a million million million. Makes perfect sense to me.
I think I have almost never in my life (in Norway), seen "Billiard", "Trillion" or "Trilliard" used anywhere.
I'm not arguing expressibility. It's just different names. I just found the system my country uses (long scale) to be less intuitive than the one used by the US (short scale).
Just take a look at the comparison [1], and make up your own mind on what is intuitive, and what not. I'm not saying you or anyone is "wrong". I find it hard to see good reason for the long scale, but I'll entertain arguments.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Long_and_short_sca...
Why is the million the base unit? Numbers are always written in groups of thousand, not million.
Sorry, but in this I agree with okamiueru - the short scale system makes much more sense.