Convert Character (character) to Gigabyte (10^9 bytes) (GB (10^9)) instantly.
About these units
Character (character)
A character is not a fixed quantity of bytes but rather a conceptual unit representing a single textual symbol. Historically, characters corresponded to one byte under ASCII, allowing for 256 distinct values. With the rise of Unicode, characters now require variable-length encoding—from 1 to 4 bytes in UTF-8, or fixed widths in UTF-16 and UTF-32. This flexibility allows representation of all human writing systems, mathematical symbols, emojis, and historic scripts. Characters are the foundation of text processing, natural-language computing, and human-computer communication. Software engineering, databases, and web technologies must carefully distinguish between characters and bytes to avoid encoding errors and data loss.
Gigabyte (10^9 bytes) (GB (10^9))
A decimal gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes and is the standard unit for hard drive and SSD capacities. As storage technology scaled into the hundreds of gigabytes and then terabytes, the decimal definition became more practical, allowing consistent scaling across consumer and enterprise devices. However, operating systems often report capacities using binary units, causing user confusion (e.g., a "500 GB" drive showing only ~465 "GB"). This mismatch persists despite standardization efforts.