Can Tailscape be used as an alternative for a regular VPN?

[deft vessel]

Can Tailscale be used as an alternative to a regular VPN?

I've mentioned to someone that I'm planning to switch from NordVPN to MullvadVPN and they suggested me to just use Tailscale.
This confused me because as far as I understand - Tailscape can't hide your traffic from your ISP or your IP from Google.
I don't own any servers either, I just wanna browse the internet more privately from my personal devices.
Would Tailscape be fit for that? if so, how does it hide your IP from google and data from the ISP?

[sinful topaz]

I can answer small bits of your questions, but you'll need to wait for an actual expert.

tailscale does hide your data from your ISP, because it encrypts it.

It doesn't hide your IP from google unless you use a VPN. Now, tailscale is not a VPN on its own, but it does offer very easy integration with Mullvad. It's explained here.

I've used it; it's super-easy. (I stopped using it because I'm cheap and don't care that much about IP privacy)

[deft vessel]

If it encrypts data from the isp, how does the isp know where to send the data, and how does the end reciever (like google) know how to decrypt it?

[sinful topaz]

Tailscale proper doesn't "encrypt data from the ISP". It encrypts the data that your machines send to each other.

a VPN encrypts data between your machine and e.g. google, but decrypts it before handing it to google; google "sees" that VPN machine's IP instead of yours.

you should read some docs about how VPNs work

[deft vessel]

So, in short, if I just wanna torrent aome movies - I need a vpn even if I use tailscape?

[autumn halo]

You need another VPN if you want to keep your information anonymous.

I'd suggest giving https://tailscale.com/blog/tailscale-privacy-anonymity a read.

We won't go into specific use cases. You should investigate that on your own.