What's the difference between https and VPN? Don't they do the same thing?

You know that HTTPS (Secure HTTP) and VPN (Virtual Private Network) are a more secure way to browse the web but what exactly happens behind the scenes when you use either of these options? Why do you need to use a VPN when you have already turned on HTTPS?

The Privacy Team at Google has recently added a couple of short and useful videos to YouTube that try to explain technical jargon like HTTPS, VPN, WPA (for secure Wi-Fi) in simple English and why these are important. Take a look:  https://youtu.be/_p-LNLv49Ug  HTTPS in simple english.  https://youtu.be/B41vCC4KLkY VPN in Simple English

The basic idea is that you encrypt traffic between your computer and the web server so that eavesdroppers cannot see any of that information. HTTPS will only encrypt traffic between your browser and a particular website while VPN will encrypt all traffic between your computer and the Internet.  So that is the answer to the Post Subject:  VPN encrypts everything between you and the VPN server, whether you use https or not.  https encrypts only between you and the target server named in the url.

Neither one does anything about maintaining encryption at the other end.  That is up to the receiving server.

If you add the extension HTTPS Everywhere to your browser, then your browser will try to force https to every url.  If it doesn't succeed, you will get a warning in the address bar.

Personally, unless you are communicating to a company server, I don't see any use for VPN except providing an IP address that is not your location IP address.