Erm, In Long Scale a billion is a million millions, however in Short Scale a billion was a thousand millions. I think everybody uses Short Scale now, just so they can pretend to have more money. :P

This headline comes to mind

Lusty Voles, Mindless Of Danger, Mate Like Rabbits

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080128165720.htm

I really hope that buying Yahoo makes Microsoft lose lots and lots of money. LOTS and LOTS of money. If Microsoft goes bankrupt, people will either go to super-expensive Apple for their computers or go to Linux.

If we can get the user base for Linux up to a magical 2-digit value(I mean percentage, smarty :p ), then maybe the game developers will start developing for Linux. Because if Linux becomes a halfway decent gaming platform, then the main reason smart people buy Windows computers goes bye-bye.

Ian, if it were British billions, Microsoft would be offering nearly four times the value of the entire US economy, or about the entire world economy. So think about it.

Microsoft will kill Zimbra and will force all the customer's to migrate to or abandon Zimbra.

Today was a very interesting day.

Shares of Yahoo shot up 45% at the start of trading...

But this change nothing to the fact that MS is crazy.

44.6 billion for a dying Yahoo, have they lost all their marbles ?

This sounds a bit scary.

They reported this on Radio 2 earlier and were quite calm about it.

If it happens it'll mean Opera will have a MS search engine as the sponsored default on their speed-dial page. MS will be paying them whilst being complained about to the EU at the same time!

And I'll say it again:

Fight! Fight! Fight!

I could think of much better things to do with $44.6 billion, such as two 22.3 billion dollar chicks at the same time.

The American billion is one thousand million: 1,000,000,000. 

The trillion is also the American version now - one thousand billion.

Originally a billion was a million million so how much is it ??