How many million dollars to make a billion dollars?

Answer 1

$1,000 million = $1 billion

Unfortunately, my British friends tell me that a million, in British English, is not 1,000,000 but 1,000,000,000 ( 9 zeroes ).

WOW! It can get confusing when thinking globally.

Your friends are wrong, the million is always 1,000,000 (6 six zeros); the difference is the Billion and above:

The US and the British government (since 1974 for official statistics) use the short scale in which each -illion is a thousand (1000) times the previous, thus 1 billion = 1000 million (9 zeros), 1 trillion = 1000 billion (12 zeros), etc.

Europe (except the UK [government]) uses the long scale in which each -illion is a million (1000000) times the previous, thus 1 billion = 1000000 million (12 zeros), 1 trillion = 1000000 billion (18 zeros), etc.

In the long scale the thousand -illions (thousand million, thousand billion, etc) are sometimes named using -illiard, thus 1 thousand million = 1 milliard, 1 thousand billion = 1 billiard, etc.

When deciding which scale to use (short or long), I use a hint in the question - in this case: "How many million dollarsare..." the dollar is [usually taken to mean] the unit of currency of the US, so I assume questioner is asking about US and US billions.