Next year, Netflix plans to extend its service to India as part of a broader global expansion.

All of them will have to contend with Google’s YouTube, the dominant online video service, which has operated in India since 2007 and has set consumer expectations for video here.

Early on, YouTube persuaded Bollywood studios and TV networks to put material on the service free.

In India, “there are no reruns of old shows,” explained Gautam Anand, YouTube’s director of content and partnerships for Asia, in a video interview from Singapore. “We convinced them there was value in a lot of that content that was just sitting there, and if they made it available, people would watch it.”

Some Indian YouTube channels now have millions of followers, and the company says the total number of hours watched has been growing 80 percent annually. YouTube recently began allowing Indians to download and store clips for later viewing. YouTube shares the revenue from advertising around the clips, giving content creators like The Viral Fever and All India Bakchod a way to earn a bit of money, although ad rates are low — from about $1 to $4 per 1,000 viewers reached, or roughly one-tenth the rate in the United States.

YouTube has also trained Indian viewers to believe that video should be free, making it difficult for anyone else to charge a fee.

Eros International, one of Bollywood’s most prolific studios, was among the first to challenge the YouTube model. In 2014, it introduced a streaming service called Eros Now, which offers access to Eros-owned films as well as licensed content.

With an extensive free tier of videos, supported by ads, the company says that Eros Now has attracted about 30 million registered users. But Eros has been tinkering with premium options — including original, made-for-streaming dramas that will begin streaming in January — that it hopes will attract a paying audience in India and abroad.

For an extra 50 to 100 rupees a month, or about 75 cents to $1.50, customers in India can get access to more videos and watch high-definition, ad-free streams. (Overseas subscribers have to pay $8 a month for the premium version.) In December, Eros will also begin allowing paid subscribers to download videos for later viewing.