A detailed article in the Philadelphia Inquirer talks about eliminating telephone directories. see:
One person quoted in the article, a web publisher, asserts that people don't want to receive telephone books anymore. I don't agree with that.
Others feel they're environmentally wasteful; and are pushing for laws that effectively ban telephone directories. I'm not sure that's a good idea or justified.
The elimination isn't just the white pages, but the yellow pages as well. Critics say cell phone apps do a better job than a hard copy directory.
My own experiences with online directories has not been satisfactory. One website defaults me to a distant state which I have to keep overtyping to do a local search. All websites listed for me a phone number and residence that was disconnected at least five years earlier.
Most disturbingly was that my actual home listing was incorrect (it is correct in the printed phone book). Different websites have me living in different towns all of which are wrong. Further, one must search for it _exactly_ as it appears, a fuzzy search or on incorrect first name spelling will result in "nothing found". In a printed book not knowing the first name or spelling it wrong doesn't matter as one can still merely go down the list of last names.
Sometimes the websites won't filter as asked, such as returning a huge list of statewide names when only a region is desired.
Some websites show additional personal information about a person, with an option to pay a fee to get more data. I've never paid the fee, so I don't know how good the premium data is, but the teasers are inaccurate. Somehow they've managed to link my parents with me, except both my parents are deceased and they don't show that. I can't help but get the impression the premium data site is kind of sleazy, where one has to pay multiple a la carte fees to get any actual useful accurate information.
All the websites run all sorts of ads next to the white pages listing. They seem to screw up here, as well, such as advertising pizza places that are 150 miles away from town being searched.
Yellow pages websites have accuracy and inclusion problems, too. Often businesses have multiple listings in the printed edition to accomodate different names. For example, "John Smith Real Estate" will be listed under both "John" and "Smith" to ensure a consumer finds it. That hasn't been my experience with online sites. As mentioned above, sometimes businesses far away are returned in searches, when local businesses don't appear at all, even when a geographic filter is included.