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A comment on Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships Explained (2024). Parent comment

Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by crossroadsguy on Monday October 06, 2025 @11:54PM (#45499230)
I couldn't really get that segue from Lithuania to Estonia. Did you mean to type "Lithuania" in the last paragraph as well?

Here..

> Additionally, I've always been very impressed with Estonia's …

Before that you were talking about Lithuania exclusively.

And then:

> … Estonia's digital infrastructure and Ukrainian software engineering - not just JetBrains …

I think it was founded in CZ and is now HQed in NL. Right?

A typo? Or there's some relation between the two countries and whether JetBrains has some history with these two that is missing here?

(I am not trying to nitpick, really interested in knowing whether there's some angle/twist here, since the post itself is about hidden connections and what not).

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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by eszed on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @01:17AM (#45499605)
They're neighboring small countries with similar (centuries' long) histories of tension with Russia, in its various guises. They're often considered en bloc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_states

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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by nerdsniper on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @01:53AM (#45499780)
> (I am not trying to nitpick, really interested in knowing whether there's some angle/twist here, since the post itself is about hidden connections and what not).

Honestly that shone through even from the first sentence.

I mentioned Estonia because Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia have a bit of shared identity, kind of similar to Sweden/Norway/Finland or USA/Canada.

> I think it was founded in CZ and is now HQed in NL. Right?

Yes I was just wrong. I was convinced it was Ukrainian for some reason.

I agree that the combination of those two points made my post particularly confusing.

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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by konart on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @02:42AM (#45500036)
JetBrains was russian (as in were most people initially actually worked). They were smart enough (like any business in russia not wanting to be trapped) to have registration outside of the country.

Some part of management were in CZ. Most of the technical team were in three buildings in St.Petersburg.

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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by crossroadsguy on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @04:03AM (#45500552)
Wow. Didn’t know. As an Android developer I find it specially interesting. Not for any nefarious reasons, for I so far believe that JetBrains is one of those companies that has been a net positive on tech ecosystem in general (touchwood!) — be their dev tools or the Kotlin itself. I also follow these people and tools, partly out of professional needs/curiosities.
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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by konart on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @05:34AM (#45501104)
FYI Kotlin language is named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_Island
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Re:Who Owns Express VPN, Nord, Surfshark? VPN Relationships ... by crossroadsguy on Tuesday October 07, 2025 @11:11AM (#45504123)
Aha. I see that it was also called "Kotling". I guess they missed this opportunity, or maybe KotLang, in which case people would have started calling it just Kot.

Also the place seems to have quite a few rebellions under its belt.

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