Consider this....
We know that Google uses algorithms to arrive at their numbers. When you search on the Google main page and the results come in and you see at the top of the page something like "Results 1 - 10 of about 24,700,000 for..." that 24.7 million number didn't come from an actual count of pages, it comes from a mathematical estimate.
Let's just say, for example, that Google arrives at that number by doing a quick random sample of 1000 pages and then multiplies the result by 10,000. It is obvious that if different databases have different pages being sampled then vastly different results could very easily happen. 10,000 times 5 is a vastly different number than 10,000 times 2 even though the difference between 2 and 5 is small.
Clearly, the Google algorithm isn't as simple as what I've outlined here, but you get the idea. Small differences in databases can very easily result in large differences reported, so there is no reason to disbelieve the "different data centers" explanation for what you're seeing.
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