Very high priority! Without this, the Contacts API is significantly less useful for
various tasks.

I agree : very high priority

Filtering out Suggested Contacts is the Contacts-related feature most requested by Spanning Sync users. Being 
able to distinguish "My Contacts" from "Suggested Contacts" via the API would be most appreciated.

Thanks,
Charlie
Spanning Sync

Like Charlie says, this issue has high priority for all our users at Soocial.com.

Thanks,
Simon de Haan
Soocial.com

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(No comment was entered for this change.)

This affects all iPhone users who sync their contacts with Google Contacts. Please
fix this!

+1 on an easy way to filter "My Contacts" via the Contacts API

I'm with them. This would be very useful as a separate feed.

I agree! absolutely necesarry

Distinguishing suggested contacts would be awesome. +∞

cheers,
Daniel 

Gahhh, this would rock. "Suggested contacts" makes things extremely annoying for me whenever I sync…

This _really_ needs to be implemented, if only because of other sync products that
aren't working properly right now.

Definitely agree with making "My Contacts" available as a separate feed.

Yes. This separation would be great to have.

Please do this... 

+1 for this suggestion. The Contacts API is not very useful without a distinction between My Contacts and 
Suggested Contacts. 

+1 on this issue. Seems this feed would be a critical feature to prevent pollution of
otherwise nice clean contact lists. Nothing more frustrating than getting it all
setup the way you want only to be polluted with contacts from email lists and such!

thanks big G!

Agree. While the suggested contacts are useful in the web interface, trying to sync
with a computer or any other device (e.g. iPhone) results in very messy contacts. 

We should be able to have these as a feed so that tools can tell suggested from
"real" contacts.

Agreed!  There is so much clutter and many duplicates with the current operations.

It will be very nice if you can filter out the Suggested Contacts from the real contacts

Please implement this as soon as possible. iPhone contact syncing is almost useless 
as is.

I think daniel.ayres is understating things when he says "syncing is almost useless".
 It's totally useless.  Can you imagine trying to find "real" contacts on an iPhone
or other mobile device when you have to sort through a thousand addresses from people
who you just had an email exchange with once?

Big problem for iPhone users who sync their phonebook with Google Contacts! Please
seperate 'My Contacts' and 'Suggested Contacts' for sync; and allow only 'My
Contacts' to be synced.

Could someone from Google give a status update on this issue as its obviously a major issue for a large amount 
of users. It has been marked as high priority for a number of months, has any progress been made on this issue?

Simon de Haan
Soocial.com

It's been 4 months and there hasn't been any progress on this 'high priority' bug.

Should we just move on to plaxo.com?

I need this!

I also agree, high priority!

How long will it take for you guys to implement this?

This should be a top priority.

Seriously, no progress on this yet? :(

+1. Where can we track changes on this?

Hello everyone,
Unfortunately, I don't have a status update that I can give at this time, but we are aware that there is a strong 
demand for this feature.

If you want to be notified of any changes, please click on the star at the top of this page. When there is news to 
report, we will post an update to this issue report.

hi tjohns,

Thanks for getting back to us. But I think a "strong demand" is a bit of an
understatement. We love the Contacts API but it's for a large part unusable and
inadequate if it pollutes the feed with random / incidental email addresses.

Looking forward to further updates.

Simon
Soocial.com

(fwiw, I deleted the original comment and published it again under my soocial.com
email address to keep track of replies).

Please fix! I represent about 50 other people too!

Do the Contact Manager changes announced today (see http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-
changes-to-gmail-contact-manager.html) affect this issue? Again, this is the biggest issue our users have with 
Google Contacts.

Thanks,
Charlie
Spanning Sync

Hah, I was about to ask. Nonetheless, I'm hopeful it does affect the issue.

Thanks,
Simon
Soocial.com

I noticed the changes in my gmail but at least as far as itunes/iphone synching goes, these changes have not 
fixed the issue. Suggested contacts are still being moved over.

+10 for this one. Would be an awesome add! 

Unfortunately recent changes do not seem to have fixed this issue. Still having
'Suggested Contacts' items in my contacts list on iPhone.

The changes that were recently announced did not include a fix for this.

That announcement was regarding promotion of contacts from "Suggested
Contacts" to "My Contacts". However, the Contacts Data API still doesn't allow
you to distinguish whether a contact is suggested or not.

If that is the case then why does the announcement say that "This will provide everyone with a clean slate and, 
we hope, a better point for syncing contacts with mobile devices (for example with Android)" ?

daniel.ayres: Because on the T-Mobile G-1 your contacts are going to be pulled from
My Contacts. By doing this the people who use the G-1 won't have their phonebook
cluttered with contacts that they just happened to have emailed five times or more
which should have stayed in Suggested Contacts to begin with.

bcannon: I see that it would benefit the G-1, I don't see how it would benefit the G-1 *more* than it would, 
or should, any other application working with the Contacts API. The reason the G-1 needs it is the exact same 
reason this issue was brought up here in the first place. It would be a bit dissapointing it the G-1 was 
released with access to the "My Contacts" feed before it becomes publicly available via the API.

cheers,

Simon
Soocial.com

As a Thunderbird / Zindus user I'd like to see this feature too. Hope Google can 
afford this to us soon.

I'm very interested in this as well as a user of both Spanning Sync and Zindus with
Thunderbird. Please get this fixed Google!

Yes, highly interested in that feature, too! Linking back to the issue that Spanning
Sync has:
http://groups.google.com/group/spanningsync/browse_thread/thread/c509b4a85638232a/063cc3dacd626fcf?lnk=gst&q=google+contact+group+#063cc3dacd626fcf

Hi,

We're seeing some activity in the Contact groups, default groups such as "Friends", "Family" and "Co-workers" 
are added. Will these become available as separate feeds like we're hoping "My Contacts" and "Suggested 
Contacts" will be, and if so, when?

cheers, Simon
Soocial.com

please support this!!!!! I hate "Suggested Contacts", lots of garbage!

Please separate "My Contacts" and "Suggested 
Contacts" ASAP!!!

The API needs to be able to distinguish between My Contacts, Groups AND Suggested
contacts.  It's like google is spamming my iphone contact list!

Synced now my iPhone is spammed with 500+ "Suggested Contacts" that are useless to 
me.

ONLY SYNC 'MY CONTACTS' - not "suggested contacts" !!!!

+1 from me as well.

As a recent user of Soocial, I wanted to keep all my address books synced, but I'll
have to exclude GMail from this now. :-/

+1. This feature would be most helpful.

+1

Another Soocial user here (or at least I want to be) but I can't include Gmail
because of all the 'Suggested Contacts'. Like rickydeez, I'm an iPhone user and I
only want My Contacts.


!

I am using Goosync and got 700 "suggested contacts" synced to my Treo. Fix this!!!!!

Users of Contact Sync (http://www.google.com/support/contactsync/) should at least have the OPTION of not 
syncing 'Suggested Contacts'. It's unfortunate that a bunch of bogus 'Suggested Contacts' get synced to my iPod 
Touch. GMail is a wonderful service, but this is a much-needed feature.

+1 More.  Should be VERY HIGH PRIORITY!

"My Contacts" and "Suggested Contacts" should most definitely be available
separately.  I like the idea of "Suggested Contacts", however, I do not want all of
those contacts to be synced to my Windows Mobile device.  Only "My Contacts," the
contacts I care about, should sync.  I currently have to delete all of my "Suggested
Contacts" before any synchronization.

BTW, since I cannot see Verizon implementing an Android device, I can't wait for it
to be ported to my phone (HTC Apache/VZW xv6700).  If I had the programming smarts, I
would help out myself.  I will certainly be a tester!

I don't understand how this still isn't fixed.  I'd rather not have suggested
contacts at all as opposed to the broken on that exists now.

+1 More to add to the groundswell of opinion.  This is a high priority in order to
make this usable.

please provide the ability to sync only "my contacts" to the iphone, apple address
book, etc.

please provide the ability to sync only "my contacts" to the iphone, apple address
book, etc.

Please get rid of suggested contacts link!! 

Please stop leaving the same silly comment over and over.  We all know everyone doesn't want the suggested 
contacts in the feed, rehashing that over and over in the comments does nothing but flood my inbox.

Just star it and move on folks.

+1 Please consider this in your next updates for Gmail.

Putting in comments like +1 does nothing but spam everyone's inbox. If you want this 
fixed, star the issue. I read on some other thread that stars are how Google 
determines whether they fix it or not, not comments. By constantly putting in junk 
comments, people that have starred the issue will unstar it and Google will be lead 
to believe that the issue doesn't affect enough people.

HIGH PRIORITY +1
any updates on this?

sorry for annoying some users with a +1, but i think this issue needs as much 
visibility as possible.

Part of me wants this fixed and now part of me hopes that everyone that's added an 
inane comment to this thread will never be able to unsync their suggested contacts. 
Sorry, but after two months of starring this issue, I'm unstarring it...

Be great to just have the ability to turn off suggested contacts entirely - seems to
me the user would want control over what they add to their contacts list. In the
absence I agree with all the other posters - I use spanning sync and now both my Mac
address book and IPhone are filled with the suggested spamtacts. 

Please get rid of Suggested Contacts! Get rid of it completely!

up up up up up!!!!

+1, definitely. It's affecting a good bunch of applications that rely on google contacts.

Please get rid of suggested contacts entirely.  I use spanning sync and don't like suggested contacts syncing to 
my address book and then to my iPhone.

http://code.google.com/p/gdata-issues/issues/detail?id=677#c70:
"Putting in comments like +1 does nothing but spam everyone's inbox. If you want this 
fixed, star the issue. I read on some other thread that stars are how Google 
determines whether they fix it or not, not comments."

Typical corporate mentality.  Release a broken api, refuse to fix it, "hey everyone
will just deal with it because we're Google".

Mike, we don't really know what Google is thinking, and it's not really useful to
intuit from their (in)action.

How about "hey everyone will just deal with it because like all companies we have finite resources and we're 
providing all of these services to you for free".  Quityerbitchin!

Mike might have been a little harsh but it's true without these features it's hard to 
make a real application. The Google (non user created) groups are important as is the 
suggested contacts group. I am sure Google will add them eventually but it should be 
a priority if they really want people to use the API.

Agreed! It's impossible to properly sync with Google Contacts without the ability to
distinguish suggested contacts from regular ones. I seem to remember that you used to
at least be able to turn off the suggested contacts feature, but that feature has
been removed. At least put that back!

dmarmor, it's never been possible to turn off Suggested Contacts; they simply weren't
separated from all Contacts, so the situation with synchronizing was exactly the same.

Hard to believe it's December and this still hasn't been fixed.

It will be great to have feeds so that we can distinguish between the contents of 
Contact Folder and Suggested Contacts.

No more suggested contacts please.

Please do away with suggested contacts. It's a real hassle having people I don't want
synced to my Address Book, .me, iPhone, etc.

Please file a new issue for suggesting that Suggested Contacts be removed entirely.
That's not what this issue is about or what people are recommending here.

+1

Can't use the face recognition stuff on Picasa Web because it pollutes my Mac Address book with suggested 
contacts (using Spanning Sync). Please make possible in the API to pick contacts by group.

Hello everyone,
Support for the My Contacts group (as well as the other system groups) has
been implemented in v2 of the Contacts API, and is now documented here:

    http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/docs/2.0/developers_guide_protocol.html#Groups

Be aware that this is implemented as a group, and not as a separate feed (as
this issue originally suggested). I've updated the issue summary to prevent
confusion. If you'd really like to see this implemented as a feed as opposed
to a group, feel free to open a separate issue.

Also, you'll need to upgrade your code to either issue v2-compliant requests
or download an updated client library to take advantage of this.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them to the Contacts API
group:

    http://groups.google.com/group/google-contacts-api

Would have preferred if suggested contacts had just been eliminated completely... for
us iPhone users this probably means we won't see a change any time soon, guess I
should start bugging Apple now 

If you use Nuevasync to sync your Google contacts with your iPhone theres good news !

http://nuevasync.blogspot.com/2008/12/nix-on-suggested-contacts.html

They already integrated the new 2.0 api changes !

If you dont use Nuevasync, what are you waiting for ?  http://www.nuevasync.com/

It looks like this is a step in the right direction. But this leaves it up to those
outside of the Gmail team to update their coding. You will still have the issue for
months to come for many people. Could we please the suggested comments piece of code
be optional? Wouldn't this even decrease processing load on Gmail's end, if many
people turn this feature off?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
0 - Please suggest new contacts to me if I email them often
X - Please do not suggest any new contacts to me for any reason
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Nick, doesn't Gmail already do this?
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/07/gmail-to-no-longer-auto-add-contacts.html

Andrew,
Gmail doesn't auto add contacts to "My Contacts" but the API just now started 
allowing selecting just "My Contacts" without the suggested ones. Syncing an iPhone 
or other device will add all contacts including the suggested ones.

Jesse,
Right, but that's because the API was updated, not the synchronization applications.
(Or do I misunderstand?) I suggest you contact the manufacturer of your
synchronization application, be it Apple or Spanning Sync or NuevaSync (the last of
which seems to be on the ball already, wow!) for updates.

I should also point out that there's a list of all the changes that were made in v2 here:

http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/docs/2.0/migration_guide.html

As for completely disabling suggested contacts, doing so would break backwards compatibility with existing 
applications. Remember that the original behavior for Gmail when the Contacts API came out was *only* 
suggested contacts. This is a relatively new feature, both for Gmail and the Contacts API, and some modifications 
are needed on the part of clients to take advantage of it.

I was just responding to your "doesn't Gmail already do this". Google changed how 
suggested contacts work. Now they will never auto add to your "My Contacts" but they 
are still collected. The API only allowed feeds of "All Contacts" and user made 
groups. So sync apps couldn't filter out the suggested contacts. The API just got 
updated so now sync apps can filter it out but yes we have to wait for updates from 
Apple, NuevaSync etc. 

Nick's suggestion was to have an option in Gmail to not collect suggested contacts so 
while we wait for updates we don't have to deal with a cluttered contacts list.

Jesse, Nick, Andrew,
If this is something you want, please file a separate feature request so that
we can properly triage and track the request.

Comments made here will not be seen by our engineering teams.

tjohns,
Certainly not something I'd want; I've been (futilely) trying to express the same
sentiment in my replies. :)

I was very pleased with I realized that I could sync my iPhone to my Google Contacts,
but with it adding information from the Suggested Contacts, I feel I will have to go
with a different solution now. Please change this! Thanks!

The API supports it (as of December 11), but Apple does not. Please talk to Apple!
Thanks!

I don't want "Suggested Contacts" anymore!! Please delete them or at least let us
choose if we want them or not!

thanks

This issue was fixed, please use Google Contacts API V2, groups information in on the
documentation.

Cheers.

moly82, this is not a Gmail support forum or even the appropriate way to suggest
Gmail features to Google; this project is for the "Google Data APIs" that external
applications can use to interact with Google Data (in this case, the Contacts). This
bug is a very specific issue with the *API* supporting My Contacts as opposed to
Suggested Contacts.

That said, you can easily delete your Suggested Contacts automatically. Otherwise,
feel free to peruse and commiserate:
http://groups.google.com/group/Gmail-Help-Discussion/search?group=Gmail-Help-Discussion&q=%22suggested+contacts%22
or suggest the feature to Gmail:
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=suggestions.cs

(Note to self: I think this is probably the last time I'm going to respond to
offtopic comments; obviously no one's reading the clarifying comments above anyway.)

(No comment was entered for this change.)

I don't want photo recognition contacts imported automaticlaly into my contacts in
gmail.  I now have a phone full of dead people and people I haven't seen for 30
years.  Completely useless.  How can I filter this out.