Megabyte (MB)
The megabyte, symbolized as MB, is equal to 1,000,000 bytes in the decimal (SI) system, although in computing, it is often regarded as 1,048,576 bytes (1,024 KB). The term emerged in the 1960s as computers and storage capacity increased, making kilobytes insufficient for describing larger files. Megabytes are used for text, images, and small software applications, providing a human-readable scale for digital data capacity while bridging metric and binary conventions.
Gigabyte (GB)
The gigabyte, symbol GB, represents 1,000,000,000 bytes in decimal, though in binary it is often approximated as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1,024 MiB). The unit was introduced in the 1980s as personal computers and hard drives increased capacity. Gigabytes measure larger data volumes, including software, multimedia, and storage devices, and became the standard for consumer storage, networking, and cloud computing as a scale between megabytes and terabytes.