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Gmail's old method of creating a contact list mixed your friends and significant other right in with a realtor from ten months back and an ex you haven't seen in years.  People who prefer a little separation in their lives will be glad to hear this has changed.

Gmail users should now see "My Contacts" and "Suggested Contacts" lists.  A post on the Official Gmail Blog states, "My Contacts contains the contacts you explicitly put in your address book (via manual entry, import or sync) as well as any address you've emailed a lot (we're using five or more times as the threshold for now)."

 Separate Contact Lists And Transfer Option

As for the other collection of email addresses, "Suggested Contacts is where Gmail puts its auto-created contacts."  And if you want, you can halt the automatic transfers between Suggested Contacts and My Contacts.

For the sake of user control, Gmail might have taken another step or two; it's not hard to imagine an option that would keep people off (or allow them to be removed from) even the Suggested Contacts list.  Still, there was at least one hint in the blog post that more changes are on the way.

Also, it seems this update is better than nothing as Google continues to tinker with its "beta" email service.