Google, Contacts, and their API

Google has announced an API for their Contacts system, which offers up a bunch of possibilities for contact management and the use of a Google contact list by third-party applications. Yay for an API and the ability to share data.

That said, I find Google’s contacts system damn near useless. Why? Noise. Why is it noisy? Because Google has decided that everyone that I ever send an e-mail to (either new or reply) should be a contact. Between managing several blogs, participating in online communities, and working with my photography on some new ventures, I get a lot of e-mail and send lots of messages and replies… many of which are one- or two-time situations involving someone I will never contact or associate with again.

I’m sure it’s designed as an ease of use feature, but there are better ways. Put a “quick add to contacts” button on Gmail to make it manual. Or make it a user-configurable option in the Gmail preferences. Lumping everyone from “people I email several times a day” to “some random guy who told me a link was broken” into one bucket makes that bucket difficult to carry.