The symbol G
January 28, 2011 11:42 AM   Subscribe

What does 1 G€ mean? I think it's 1 billion Euros, but I never use the symbol G and it's hard to find online.

The context is a company's financial reporting, where they disclose that EU ETS allocations may represent an additional charge "from 1 G€ to 1.6 G€" to the company.
posted by chefscotticus to Work & Money (10 answers total)
 
I think they probably intended for it to mean "gigaeuros" or, yes, billion. But yeah, that's kind of weird.
posted by milkrate at 11:49 AM on January 28, 2011


could it be Gross as in before taxes and expenses?
posted by Confess, Fletch at 11:54 AM on January 28, 2011


pretty sure it's just a 'G', as in 'GB', meaning, yes, billion.

You don't mention where you or the company are located, but it's worth pointing out that usage of 'billion' is different in the US and certain other English-speaking countries; this could be their attempt to disambiguate.
posted by FlyingMonkey at 11:57 AM on January 28, 2011


French Wiktionary confirms, gigaeuro.
posted by Gator at 12:01 PM on January 28, 2011


I've seen that usage before...it's pretty common in europe...yes, G=Billion
posted by sexyrobot at 12:03 PM on January 28, 2011


Using giga- avoids any confusion for people who use long scale number naming where "billion" means a million (1,000,000,000,000) million instead of a thousand million (1,000,000,000). Giga- should always mean a thousand million (although sometimes it's used in a computational context as 230 instead of 109).
posted by grouse at 12:30 PM on January 28, 2011 [4 favorites]


It's part of the metric system culture. I hear they tend to be metric happy on that side of the Atlantic Ocean, hence the designated abbreviations for powers of 10: …, giga(G), mega(M), kilo(k), unit_of_choice, deci(d), centi(c), milli(m), micro(µ), nano(n), … on and on.
posted by polymodus at 2:29 PM on January 28, 2011


It's just like $5k or $17M.

Only it's with Euros, and there's more of them.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:38 PM on January 28, 2011 [1 favorite]


It's part of the metric system culture. I hear they tend to be metric happy on that side of the Atlantic Ocean, hence the designated abbreviations for powers of 10: …, giga(G), mega(M), kilo(k), unit_of_choice, deci(d), centi(c), milli(m), micro(µ), nano(n), … on and on.

Ahem... the second part of this answer is correct. Giga = 109 or 1,000,000,000.

As for the first part of the answer: in Canada as well as Mexico, South America on THIS side of the Atlantic are "metric happy" too. Only three countries in the world (the U.S., Liberia and Burma) do not use the metric system.
posted by aroberge at 6:42 PM on January 28, 2011


We use the metric system plenty in the U.S., it's just that the customary system is more found in common use. Lots of people know what "giga-" means, but you're unlikely to hear of a figure in gigadollars, whether those dollars are Canadian or American.
posted by grouse at 6:48 PM on January 28, 2011


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