Bottles were popular "'way back when" in my area but mostly disappeared when the alumin(i)um cans appeared. For a while, you could get cans or draft/draw/draugt/tap beer in a mug/glass, and most places only had one or two brands.

Running a keg still probably is a little cheaper for the establishment, but maintenance (keeping it clean) requires some "skilled labor," and with the colored water euphemistically called "beer" here it was noticed when neglected.

Probably just a local thing, but drinking from the bottle first became popular here again in the places where there's a definite difference between being able to get a glass and being able to get a clean glass. It's also more common for places to stock a few, or few dozen kinds of "yuppie beers." It's easier to stock bottles than to have more than one or two kegs hooked up, and many of the "varietal" things are easiest to get in bottles.

Now, in places where people drink from the bottle, it probably is mostly due to the practice of offering lots of different kinds of "beer" and with having your friends (and the servers) know what you're drinking ... something to do with being sure that everyone can see that you have the "refined taste" that demands "something special," and aren't drinking anything "ordinary" like what your friends have.

In the southwest/southcentral US, the intermittent popularity of Mexican beers that require addition of a lemon wedge to have any flavor at all may contribute. With the wedge forced into a long-neck, you don't get a mouth full of lemon wedge with each sip, as you would with lemon in a mug.

But someone who actually understands the greedy bastards yuppy/gen-X crowd may have more ideas about it.

John