The Secret VPN Monopoly

VPNs, there are lots of reasons why people use them. Privacy, piracy, changing their location, watching movies only available in other regions, etc. Let's say you are an average consumer, a techie but not someone who looks into privacy that much. You look up the best VPNs and get the same recommendations on every site. I will explain this in a moment but first I want to address something very important. The companies that own the VPNs
Kape Technologies

• Cyberghost — Acquired in 2017 ($9.8M)
• Zenmate — Acquired in 2018 (€4.8M)
• PrivateInternetAccess — Acquired in 2019 ($95.5M)
• ExpressVPN — Acquired in 2021 ($936M)

Now think about this, the biggest VPNs are owned by the same companies, that's strange, isn't it? However, it's not only just these 4 vpns

j2Global (IGN owner)

• IPVanish (you know what this is if you own a firestick)  — Acquired in 2019
• StrongVPN — Acquired in 2019
• ibVPN — Acquired in 2020
• SaferVPN — Acquired in 2019
• Encrypt.me — Acquired in 2019
• BufferedVPN — Acquired in 2019

As you can see, more big vpns, while not the biggest, are owned by one company
Avast
ZenVPN (Acquired for ????)
HMA VPN (Acquired for $40M
Avast VPN (Founded)
Nord Security
NordVPN
SurfsharkVPN
AtlasVPN
Gaditek
IvacyVPN
Pure VPN
Aura
Hotspot Shield
TouchVPN
JustVPN


Now let's review the VPN sites, ever heard of VPNmentor, you probably have but you don't remember
Kape Techonlogies (above) acquired the site for about 100 million dollars, and all their VPNs top the VPNmentor list, wonder why? It's also the first site to show up on search engines. What about VPN ranks? That's owned by Gaditek. Now let's consider sponsors, many of your favorite sites, YouTubers, athletes, celebrities, etc promote big VPNs. This means the biggest sponsors will be able the spread the word about themselves. Usually, I see Express, Nord, and Surfshark sponsoring content. You have to keep this in mind when choosing a vpn because a couple of big companies can prevent the truth from spreading