Japan is Becoming "the Land of the Free" Again

I am not talking about the freedom of speech or the freedom to meet... but that businesses are turning to the one tactic that helped spread mobile phone ownership lightning fast - FREE MOBILE PHONES - to other business areas now.

Namely, Yahoo has announced that merchants will no longer need to pay to sell on Yahoo! Shopping and Yahoo! Auctions.

There is a lot of controversy around this since it was announced:

On the one hand, advocates believe this will give Yahoo! a badly needed boost to catch up with front runners Rakuten and Amazon.co.jp

Antagonists are convinced that this will fill up the space with lots of crappy merchants and chase good business away to the very people Yahoo! hopes to conquer; the theory that bad gold will chase away good gold.

The verdict is still out, but Yahoo is busily promoting away. 

Another interesting FREE campaign is cable service provider J:com's 100,000 free tablets giveaway campaign. 

They seem to have teamed up with Huaway for the free 100,000 units. (Users can choose SONY as well, but that won't be for free.)

Of course there is a catch, that one must sign a one-year contract, but we are all familiar with these thanks to the mobile phone companies, one of which has a strong tie-up with J:com, au.