Virtual Private Cloud - An isolated, private network within a public cloud provider where you control IP addressing, subnets, routing, and security. Available as AWS VPC, Azure Virtual Network (VNet), Google Cloud VPC Network, and Oracle Cloud VCN. Like having your own secure, private neighborhood within a large city.
A financial services company creates a VPC with public subnets for web servers and private subnets for databases, using security groups to control traffic between tiers.
All four provide logically isolated virtual networking in a public cloud: you define IP ranges, subnets, routes, and security controls. Key differences include scope (AWS/OCI are regional with per-AZ subnets; Azure VNets are regional; GCP VPCs are global with regional subnets) and how firewalling is expressed (AWS security groups/NACLs, Azure NSGs/UDRs, GCP firewall rules/routes, OCI security lists/NSGs/route tables).