Tailscale raises $100M

From the website:

What if we all just had a static IP address, and a DNS name? …and the address migrated around the world with you? …and you could connect to any of your devices no matter where they were?

Does this not promote the destruction of anonymity on the Internet?

I think you've got a fundamental misunderstanding of what Tailscale does. It's all about accessing your own devices. You don't need or want anonymity in that case. They are not a general purpose VPN service, and can't even be used as one.

No? The fact that some machines (notably: all your _own devices_) need to be able to reliably talk to each other does nothing to impact anonymity on the Internet. Sure, you can route everything out of your own IP using Tailscale also, and that might be desirable if you're on a crappy connection, but it's still completely orthogonal to privacy-preserving techniques like Tor (and may in fact make those easier to deploy).

Tailscale doesn't make privacy worse any more than the fact that to a first approximation, no residential Internet provider in the US has rotated an IP in recent memory.

(Disclosure: I'm a (small) investor via Latacora's sibling fund, Lagomorphic.)

No, I think you misunderstand that companies like this have huge visions, not tiny one like "just your own devices".

They are claiming they are on the road to "fix the internet", their own words.

> They are not a general purpose VPN service, and can't even be used as one.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but this sounds like exactly what they are, with some functionality on top. It's what I use to VPN into my LAN from outside, and it's pretty general purpose from where I stand.

I'm talking about services like NordVPN, Mullvad, etc. They do not funnel your Internet connection through their servers.

Ah, fair enough.

Those are not general purpose VPNs though.

In fact, they are not even VPNs in the first place. They merely use the same technology to provide a private tunnel to the public Internet (and use the name in marketing material because by now people are familiar with it).

What they are not is general purpose private networks.

They are absolutely VPNs. If you don't like my term "general purpose" that's fine, but they 100% fit the definition of VPN.

A VPN is a Virtual Private Network. Those services you mentioned merely provide a secure tunnel to the same public Internet you'd have access without them, avoiding eavesdropping by your ISP or other intermediaries, whilst handing over that capability to the "VPN" provider. There is no private network anywhere in this case.

An actual VPN provides you with a private network that just happens to workover of the public Internet, usually encrypted, but is inaccessible from it.

    A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The benefits of a VPN include increases in functionality, security, and management of the private network. It provides access to resources that are inaccessible on the public network and is typically used for remote workers. Encryption is common, although not an inherent part of a VPN connection.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network

Sticking with Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VPN_service

Saying that these services are "not VPNs" is unnecessary pedantry. Definitions evolve over time, and these services meet the common definition of a VPN.

If they start off as VPN but morph into something more (like Cloudflare, Google, etc...) then it really doesn't matter how you define them "today" if their goal as a company is to become something more/different.