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That's a good point, but I remember a few years ago, people were lauding that innovations like the self driving car were expected 15 years prior, but the fact was that good software infrastructure hadn't existed which slowed down development. Those people usually were saying that now that there had been two decades of software infra development, we were finally about to see some serious shit come out. To some degree they were right. The self driving car, as an example, really is a reality now, but regulation is now the limiting factor. I'm not sure if this applies to other things as well, though.
I can say at least as someone who's been in software for the last decade, our work is significantly significantly slowed down by regulatory adherence, like more than you can possibly imagine. I'd venture to say that most major systems at big tech companies that I know about probably either spend greater than 50% of their time trying to prove they are compliant, or else are systems that are purely designed to help other systems prove their compliance. Right now, the later case are the systems which provide the most measurable value at big tech companies, by means of accelerating the development of other systems. So maybe that's the next big hurdle, now that we're past the development of good infra systems, we now have the unforeseen task of creating good governance and compliance systems.
Edit: And I don't mean to imply that regulation and governance infra are wasting time and energy, I actually believe that these systems do strongly positively impact end-customer privacy, ensure that the data is being used safely. It's just that it's not very evident to people outside the company exactly where all the time and effort is going. At best, customers can take big tech at their word on their statements and promises about customer privacy, and at worst they'll think they're talking out of their asses.
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