Why make billions when we can make... millions?

Here are the largest numbers I have been able to imagine at various ages:

Age 5: "OK class, I want you to count down from 100" (Mrs Millner)
Age 6: "There are tens of thousands of people in America. It is one of the biggest countries in the World" (Mrs Lardner)
Age 7: "I've got millions of stickers at home" (Norman Benezra)
Age 8: "A Rolls Royce is what millionaires drive" (my mother)
Age 9: "China has one thousand million people, it will soon be a superpower. The World has four thousand million people" (my grandfather)
Age 10: "A billion is a million million, but in America they call a thousand million a "billion" (my grandfather)
1990: "The Savings and Loans crisis is likely to cost the American taxpayer over $100 billion" (Time Magazine)
1998: It's called "Google". I think it means 10 to the power of 24 or something (Alberto)
1999: Yahoo! is bigger than British Airways! (Poster at LHR December 1999 - YHOO market cap at $120bn)
1999: Dot Com billionaires
2008: The Zimbabwe government is now circulating a Z$ 100 trillion bank note
2009: "What if I had a Googol pennies?" (Ria - age 5)
"Well, you know your school, you could buy that with all that money"
"Really!?"
"And I'll ask you for a job!"
"Why?"

2009: The healthcare plan is estimated as costing $800 billion, bringing the total US debt to over $10 trillion... (Reuters)

Will we have Clean Energy Trillionaires?
or
Nanotech Googlites?