Evolution

[Cyberman]

Confusing? Not really. 1,000,000,000 is just one thousand million. This progresses in the normal way:

10,000,000,000: ten thousand million
100,000,000,000: one hundred thousand million
1000,000,000,000: one billion (one million million)
1,000,000,000,000,000,000: one trillion (one million million million)

and so on. It's only become confusing since we adopted your standard; although to be fair, as long as we had unequal standards, confusion was part of the package. It's my opinion that we chose the wrong one. A more cynical person might say that the temptation to 'The Government' to sound more affluent, more successful and more benificent whilst spending a thousandth of what you think they are outweighed mathematical accuracy and plain common sense.

In general usage, this sort of hairsplitting probably looks like pedantic nonsense. On the other hand, in certain specific fields such as astronomy, mathematics and others in which numbers of this magnitude are used, accuracy is key. A spacecraft would certainly spot the difference between enough fuel for one thousand million kilometres (about as far as Saturn) and one million million kilometres (about a tenth of a lightyear).

Much simpler, in my view, to scrap the whole billion/trillion/quadrillion tangle and adopt mutliples of million as the new standard.