> Why didn't several other such popular startups appear

bunny.net

fastly.com

gcore.com

keycdn.com

Cloudfront

Probably some more I forgot now. CF is not the only option and definitely not the best option.

> Yeah, now we'll save everyone from DDoS, everything's perfect, we'll speed up your site,

... and host the providers selling DDoS services. https://privacy-pc.com/articles/spy-jacking-the-booters.html

Thank you for sending these alternatives, they look good. And, of course, the most important thing is that Cloudflare is free, while these alternatives cost money. And they cost hundreds of dollars at my traffic volume of tens of terabytes. Of course, I really don't want to pay. So, as they say, mice wept and jabbed, but they kept gnawing on the cactus.