Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of them from search

Re:Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of... by ghaff on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:10PM (#28237983)

I don't know the history of why there was never a cellphone directory. There was never a monopoly controlling all those numbers for one thing as was originally the case with landlines--and regional monopolies after the Bell breakup.

I also suspect that by the time cellphones got big, the public overall wouldn't have been big on cellphones numbers being listed.

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Re:Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of... by foobarian on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:26PM (#28238198)

Around that time frame is also when spamming picked up quite a bit, while at the same time early mobile plans rarely had unlimited talk time making the spam particularly costly.

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Re:Google introducing tool for under-18s to remove images of... by ghaff on Thursday August 19, 2021 @03:58PM (#28238592)

Most people's early mobile plans were very limited, the person receiving the call paid for it in the US, and costs were even higher for calls that weren't from your immediate local area. And, as you say, junk landline calls were becoming a bigger deal.

This old article https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2001/06/why-isn-t-there-... claims that the wireless carriers didn't want to put out a directory because consumers would be upset if they had to pay for junk calls.

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