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The New Internet

(tailscale.com)
517 points ingve | 3 comments | 26 Jul 24 18:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.649s | source
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teddyh ◴[27 Jul 24 03:19 UTC] No.41084227[source]▶
The eternal problem with companies like Tailscale (and Cloudflare, Google, etc. etc.) is that, by solving a problem with the modern internet which the internet should have been designed to solve by itself, like simple end-to-end secure connectivity, Tailscale becomes incentivized to keep the problem. What the internet would need is something like IPv6 with automatic encryption via IPsec, with PKI provided by DNSSEC. But Tailscale has every incentive to prevent such things to be widely and compatibly implemented, because it would destroy their business. Their whole business depends on the problem persisting.

(Repost of <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570370>)

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sulandor ◴[27 Jul 24 08:28 UTC] No.41085236[source]▶
> The eternal problem with companies like

it's not a problem specific to any kind of corporation or corporations per se, but organizations or even broader, solutions.

though, do you really think that having a solution to a problem is worse than just having the problem?

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1. teddyh ◴[27 Jul 24 12:21 UTC] No.41086111[source]▶
It is a problem if a company makes a lot of money ”solving” the problem, but:

• This does not really solve the problem, since a real solution would be to change the internet to make the problem go away

• A company making a lot of money gets to have an enormous influence on what is considered reasonable to standardize on. See for instance Google’s and Microsoft’s influence on things like the W3C. (Or if Tailscale is allowed to define what ”The New Internet” will be.)

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2. sulandor ◴[27 Jul 24 12:51 UTC] No.41086249[source]▶
seems indeed that microsoft is making lots of money by defending the status quo
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3. teddyh ◴[27 Jul 24 13:24 UTC] No.41086439[source]▶
All large incumbents defend the status quo, except when advocating for larger barriers to entry for new and smaller competitors.