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Citing increased competition and rising costs as the main reason behind the shutdown, Atlas VPN stated that the "insurmountable challenges" had become too much and it could no longer keep up in a highly competitive market.
The popular freemium VPN service was acquired by Nord Security in 2021 with promises that Atlas VPN would continue to operate independently as a business. That's all changed now though, and the entire user base of around 6 million members will migrate over to the much larger NordVPN after shutdown, continuing an unsettling trend of consolidations in the VPN market as a whole.
The VPN consolidation trend
The global VPN market is valued somewhere in the neighborhood of around $40 billion, so it's no wonder that tech companies are chomping at the bit to control as much of that fortune as they can. What used to be a diverse market made up of small, independent VPN companies has now become a homogenous security consortium.
Security conglomerates with strong financial backing have systematically bought up and folded these smaller VPNs into their own businesses. Atlas VPN is just the latest example.
Market consolidation is not inherently a bad thing, and mergers are common in the fast-moving world of tech. But these umbrella companies often intentionally obscure their own owner
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