Every society has developed its own number system to suit its own needs. The most common base of the world is 10 system, but each region has its own. Today, Google has started showing YouTube views as lakhs and crores instead of millions and billions in India. This is currently visible only on YouTube’s Android app. Its desktop version and iOS app still display view counts as millions and billions.
There was no update or announcement from YouTube on the change and it turns out it’s not visible for all Android users. With the new change, users will start seeing view counts displayed in lakhs and crores instead of the previous millions and billions. For example, if a video on YouTube has 10 lakh views it means it has 1 million views. Similarly, 1 crore views on a video mean it has 10 million views. This is applicable to the number of subscribers as well. There’s also no option to switch back to the older view count.
For those not familiar, lakh or sometimes lac is used to mean one hundred thousand (10⁵) while crore stands in for one hundred lakhs (that's 10 million or 10⁷). Thousands are still used.
Some Asian numeral systems, including the Chinese and Japanese ones, mark significant units in factors of 10,000 all the way up to 10⁴⁴ (that's 10 septillions). YouTube in those languages uses those local units.
This change in view count will naturally be applicable only to Indian viewers but it may end up causing confusion. YouTube has so far determined view counts in thousands, millions and billions for creators and viewers globally. Now users in India who wish to understand how many views a video has received would have to calculate and compare.
Some YouTube users who are seeing the change have started complaining on Twitter and the platform’s support page.
