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Google has announced an update to the web version of Google Contacts. It’s an app that has long been hidden inside of Gmail and has never gotten the attention it deserved, but that’s changing with today’s announcement.
The most obvious change is a Material Design user interface that is in line with their vision of a more beautiful internet. No secrets or surprises there. The new functionality is what has us most excited, though.
For starters, Google has made it easier to find and manage duplicate contacts. They say they’ve built the engine from the ground up to more effectively and accurately identify duplicates, and they make it quite easy to either delete or combine entries with one click of a button.
They’ve also made a change where recent meetings and conversations with a certain contact will now show up on their page. It’s a nice and natural way to reference an encounter without having to get your hands messy with a search. Finally, when it can, Google Contacts will use Google+ profile information to automatically keep your contacts up to date (and anything it can’t catch you can always find yourself).
These changes won’t be available from within Gmail just yet, but you can get a preview by heading right here. Be sure to bookmark it for easy access while we await its integration into Gmail and (hopefully) Inbox by Gmail.
[via Google]
bout time, it feels like its been the same for 10 years
It is about time. Their web interface for contacts has always been bad (although synching to devices from it has always been great).
For some odd reason, my contact photo keeps degrading and becoming so low-res photo. I’ve watched this happen when I change ROMs. I hope this problem gets fixed. I don’t know where to upload the contact photo to. If it’ll be better to use Google Contacts or from my phone. I saw workarounds, but all that work shouldn’t be necessary.
People still use ROMs??
Yes. ._.
My main reason is theming. It becomes a much simpler process when using ROMs since some have theming options integrated.
How about shared address books.
Nice, but it still brings in G+ data making for a bunch of duplicate fields … birthdays, addresses, phone numbers, etc. Is there any way to turn G+ integration off?
good point actually….I wsa liking the idea of splitting Photos away from Google+, now they are integrating it with contacts??
And exactly 1 reason why I do NOT do G+ (or any social media)… all of the associated nonsense. Google is pushing G+ on EVERYTHING, in some ways you cannot even use some of their products without making a G+ account (YouTube). So, I don’t.
The noise, clutter and nonsense associated with social media anything, like G+, is deafening and pushing into every area of our web iives – makes me sick.
I hear you. I’m not a farcebook user, thought Twitter had potential for a few things, then *boooom* suddenly all the twats from Facebook end up on Twitter and now thats full of crap. Just yesterday TSN had to back peddle on comments made in Twitter.
Material design update was needed here…
I highly doubt it’s been fixed, but I hope so. I had to follow a guide last time and pretty much start with a clean slate as I had 500+ contacts, when in reality it was around 130 and the rest duplicates
Thank god, I thought this day would never come. I will say I’m pretty sure my duplicates problem is caused by Verizon always trying to transfer my contacts when I get a new phone, or backing up to their cloud even if you tell their app not to. Waze also had a problem where if I link it to my contacts it makes 10 entries for every person with waze. This is one of gmails most useful integrations. Pulling g+ data isn’t a big deal, it’ll only do it if you have friends on g+, same as android.
Nice to hear this.. I use google contacts as my main contacts store, and push to other services. Hope it works well..
UGH!! THANK YOU!! I come here often enough to be distressed by the old design. This is so lovely!! I’m happy now. I can now die with my soul at ease.
Nice! For the first time now, I can go to my contacts web page and not have Chrome “flicker” constantly… Great UI upgrade…
Lovely! Now for the love of god update the calendar web version.