iGoogle is one of the services that will use these groups for managing your shared activities. One size doesn't fit all, so separating your contacts could simplify the way you share and receive information.
If you don't like the new groups, the bad news is that you can't delete them. Try to ignore them, but keep in mind that they'll be useful at some point.
Google has three other default contact groups: My Contacts (manually-added contacts), Suggested Contacts (email addresses collected from your conversations) and Most Contacted (20 frequently-used email addresses). Google no longer automatically adds email addresses to My Contacts. "Only contacts that you've edited, imported or added to a group will remain in My Contacts. This will provide everyone with a clean slate and, we hope, a better point for syncing contacts with mobile devices."
{ Thanks, Roody. }
There's also a generated group called "Medical Contacts" containing people you've entered through Google Health. Since this is not a "default group" as you call it, it can be deleted.
ReplyDeleteI am glad to see this, and unhappy. The three groups, "Friends, Family, and Co-workers" mirror the groups offered by GrandCentral, "Friends, Family, Work, and Others."
ReplyDeleteSo I am glad to see this as it suggests greater integration with GrandCentral soon. But I am unhappy to see this as these three groups aren't enough. Perhaps if it was friends, family, work, jerks, and others, but even so, I'd prefer just to come up with my own groups.
You prompted me to look at my contact list... I have a ton of contacts that live the other side of the world from me, whom I've never seen before mixed in with my contacts.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how they got there. I have soocial syncing my contacts, so they could have come from there, or it could be a random gmail glitch. Ever heard of something like this happening?
@jerry you can add more groups ;) the +(two people) button at the top left
ReplyDeleteThanks imma, of course, that's not really what I want to do. Waah, yeah, I want to add groups to my grandcentral contacts (and have them integrated into my gmail contacts.)
ReplyDeleteI already had groups of my own named "Friends" and "Family". Why, oh why were those not automatically rolled into the new groups? Is that not an obvious step?
ReplyDeleteThe new default Groups for Google Contacts also match nicely with the sharing feature that we can see in the video about Socialstream here.
ReplyDeleteDoes that means we will get Socialstream soon?
gmail = big brother = screw gmail
ReplyDeleteGMail's default groups don't work with auto-complete for contacts. This was very unfortunate because I used to have all my family and co-workers in my own contact groups named "Family" and "Co-workers". I figured I might as well move the contacts over to the defaults ones so that I only see one "Family" contact group instead of two. When I discovered that auto-complete didn't work I attempted to add my "Family" contact group back in and it wouldn't let me because it was a duplicate. Google, please fix auto-complete to work with default groups.
ReplyDeleteI should be more clear. When I said it the default groups don't work with auto-complete for contacts I mean that if you type "Family" in the "To" field of your GMail message it doesn't pick up the family contacts like it does with your own groups.
ReplyDeletePlease, add field Birthday to Contacts
ReplyDeleteUnhelpful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is completely ridiculous. Just let me delete the fricking groups. And change All Contacts back to Suggested Contacts!
ReplyDeleteUpset that I don't have the option to remove the groups. What a quote:
ReplyDelete"If you don't like the new groups, the bad news is that you can't
delete them. Try to ignore them, but keep in mind that they'll be
useful at some point."
Gmail telling me what I'll find useful at some point.
I also wonder why the default groups cannot be deleted. It was one of the first things I wanted to do and I do not see a compelling reason to make them undeletable.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteThe default groups are used in other applications. For example, iGoogle's social gadgets can share information with the contacts from the Friends group.
Can we please make these deletable? I have no use for a family contact group as my family consists of two different sets of contacts: my mom and her family and my dad and his family. I created my own groups for each of those contacts and therefore do not use the Family group.
ReplyDeleteThere should be a labs feature that permits deactivation of unwanted default groups, which, thereafter, could be hidden. Other google products should automatically be linked and synchronized with one's choice of groups, default or user-created.
ReplyDelete..or at least have an option to hide them from view.
ReplyDeletei don't know why we can't hide them. i'm not able to work ... but i really appreciate google rubbing it in my face with the mandatory co-workers list.
ReplyDeleteYes, I too am disabled and really do not appreciate the slap in the face every time I use gmail...'Business' might be a better group name.
ReplyDeleteBut for now it seems they are just discriminating against me
Still no way to delete theses groups? I don't like to have English named groups (I speak French) that I can't delete.
ReplyDeleteI have never used coworkers or co-workers -- don't know which is correct, for I difficulties when 1st using GM and added group called, I believe co-workers.
ReplyDeleteCurrently have in google neither of these groups. On the android have co-workers which is undeletable, and in Thunderbird have coworkers which if deleted, returns after sync.
Google doesn't allow removal of this mess? There must be some way ???
Thought I had added a comment, but it's not seen a half an hour later, so will try again.
ReplyDeleteIn Google Contacts I had one entry. The 1st day deleted it as unwanted. Then had difficulties and read that it can't be deleted, so added it back. Wasn't sure of the original entry, so added it back as co-workers. I now have -- and synced just prior to this msg -- in Google Contacts no entry, in Thunderbird coworkers which returns every time it's synced, in the android it's co-workers and I can't find method to remove it.
Can't delete default group, "Friends","Family","Coworkers", a bad setting.
ReplyDelete