Gmail Updates Its Contact Manager to (Hopefully) Reduce Clutter

By Michael Santo
Editor-in-Chief, RealTechNews

On Wednesday Google announced changes to the way contacts are handled in Gmail. Previously, rather than just allowing you to fully control who does and does not get added to your contacts, they automatically added people you email to your contact list.

The change made today adds another type of contact: Suggested Contacts. When you email someone, that person is moved into a “Suggested Contacts” group. From there, if you want, you can move them into your “My Contacts” group. There’s also a “Most Contacted” group.

You can also create your own contact groups, which you can then add contacts to. Much like adding Labels to emails, you can have a contact in more than one group.

Of course, they still kept a rather arcane setting:

“Automatically move suggested contacts into My Contacts if I frequently email them.”

And of course, they don’t tell us what “frequently” is. Of course, while that’s the default setting, you can uncheck it and take total control of your contacts. And that’s what I would recommend for those of you, like me, who’ve been annoyed by the auto-add feature of Gmail from the beginning.