I’m publishing this letter sent to me by Ettore, one of the many Italians living and working abroad.
Ettore writes from Silicon Valley where Google has launched an important world-wide initiative for the development of a mobile platform.
Italy is excluded from this. The reason is the bureaucracy that oppresses our country.
This train that we have missed has very serious consequences and the evaluation is very important: bureaucratic countries are excluded from innovation and from development.

”Dear Di Pietro,
As you will know, Italy has been excluded by Google from the competition connected to the new mobile platform, called Android. Thus we are knocked down before we start the race for 10 million dollars that could have come to Italy. I would like to point out that Italy is the ONLY one, I repeat, the only State in the world that is excluded because of non-political reasons. (OK, even a part of Canada is excluded, but that’s just a part.) The reasons are the usual ones, the bureaucracy and the laws that are of another era that oblige Google to have a dialogue with Ministers, notaries, State monopolies and so on, with the inevitable result of a long and absurd process.
Google’s position is understandable. Who makes us, Google, do this to get a head ache (Italian-style) when I am offering 10 million dollars??
All this seems crazy to me: is it possible that this can be happening in 2007?
I would also like to reflect on another problem that is closely connected to the individual initiative and to the related infrastructure. Why is individual enterprise discouraged? I live in Silicon Valley, in California, and all around me I see twenty year olds who are starting one company after another and they are creating jobs, creating innovation, continually. Here there’s even a really great word for identifying these burgeoning companies: "startup".
Apple, HP, Google, Flickr, and Facebook, all started like that. To start up a company in California you need to fill in a form, pay a few dollars, and in half an hour you are away. In Italy I’m not saying it should be like that, but EVEN MORE SIMPLE, because there are no jobs: so then we need to create new ones, and who better than the young people have the will to create them?
So let’s facilitate, let’s invent, let’s make it possible to create startup and venture capital. What’s the point in complaining that there’s no work when we are complicating individual initiative? Directly hindering participation in a foreign competition? Listen to me: to resolve the problem of jobs, put the young people in a position to create them.
It would be great if you would talk about these basic issues (of infrastructure?) on your blog.
Compliments for your work and your honesty, that I appreciate.
It’s because of this that I am writing to you.
Ettore Pasquini"