More info here (http://www.google.com/mobile/products/sync.html#p=blackberry).

Basically, it's an app you install on the blackberry (or iPhone, windows mobile, or symbian), and it will sync contacts between your blackberry address book and your google contacts. It does this sync over the mobile data network, and never requires your blackberry to be tethered to a computer. Blackberry enterprise users connecting through BES server already have this functionality, so it would be unnecessary. But for BIS users, AFAIK there isn't another wireless way to keep your contacts synced. What I'm doing now is using Desktop Manager to sync to Outlook on a local PC. It's really the only reason I have Outlook installed, as I don't use it for email or calendaring, so if this Google Sync allows me to completely bypass Outlook, that'll be a good thing.

I'm concerned about duplicate contacts, syncing issues, or any other problems that people have had before I start to rely on this for a whole bunch (10000+) of contacts.

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Question alex...I use google calendar and I love it. Would I somehow be able to add an event on google calendar on my blackberry and have it show up on the comp? From that video it seems yes but than I would actually have google calendar on my phone or I would set the appointment on my blackberry calendar and then it would go to google calendar on the desktop?

Yes, it's even easier than that. Once installed and configured, it will automatically sync your blackberry calendar (on the device) with your google calendar (online).

It doesn't create a new calendar program on your blackberry, it integrates with the existing one.

So I'd still have to use the blackberry calender if I wanted to add something on my phone? I don't really like the blackberry calender but I guess this doesn't allow me to get around it when adding something directly from the phone...

You could always use the web browser on the blackberry to log in to google calendar directly, but I think it would be pretty clunky. Takes only a few seconds to add something to the blackberry calendar, and then this would update your google calendar in the background soon after you make the change. Works the other way too; when you update something on your google calendar, it will automatically show up on your device in the background as well. This way all of the alerts and other features that are built-in to the blackberry will work exactly as designed.

What don't you like about the blackberry calendar? I don't use it for anything particularly complicated, but it seems to work fine for my purposes.

I use it and love it. It's on my blackberry. You can tell it what gets priority - outlook, blackberry, google, etc.
As for how to add things - I usually go through the quick-add web interface with the google calendar which only takes a minute.

OK, I've got it installed on my berry, and have enabled it to work with my calendars. Works great, bidirectionally, with zero issues. I don't see that amount of customization that noche is referring to, though. It lets you log into your google account, lets you enable syncing of calendar and/or contacts, and in the calendar options you can choose which calendar to sync to if you have multiple google calendars.

I haven't enable the contacts sync yet, but I don't yet see where one would be able to choose priority of Google vs. Outlook vs. Berry in case of conflict, is that buried somewhere?

you know, I can't find it now - maybe I did that online somewhere, or maybe I'm mixing it up with when I used the desktop manager stuff to pull things out of outlook... sorry

No experience with it as I use BES server, but looks like a cool solution.

I haven't tried it, as I use a Palm phone, not Blackberry, but this topic does highlight a significant Irony to me.

Apparently Google doesn't have enough faith in Google Video, and they felt the need to host their own video on YouTube.

Doesn't google own youtube????

Google bought youtube awhile back. Surprisingly, they've left Google Video up and running all this time.

Verdict is in; it's not ready for primetime. For calendar syncing it seems to work fine, exactly as designed. But it hosed the contacts for both myself and my wife.

My wife didn't have her contacts online with google, so her sync went like this:

2000-ish contacts on phone, none on google. Sync pushed all contacts to google contacts, and back to phone. At that point, many of them were screwed up. It took the "title" field and misinterpreted it. So on the phone it used to be John Doe, VP, Gadget Inc. After the sync, the first name became VP John, last name Doe. Or sometimes just first name VP, last name John. There were other types of screwups, but those were the most prevalent. It didn't look like any were fully deleted; the same number of contacts in her phone were now online, they were just garbled. I'll have to delete everything from her phone address book and repush everything from her Outlook.

On mine it was worse:

I made sure the latest contacts I had were in my Outlook, and I synced my phone to them ahead of time. I also loaded those contacts directly to google contacts by importing them, so what was on the phone and what was on google should have been quite similar, if not identical. I hit sync, and it took hours. At the end of it, not only were many of my contacts garbled on both sides, but some of them were duplicated as many as 8 times on my phone. Just like for my wife's, I'll have to wipe the entire address book on the phone and repush everything from Outlook.

The google sync product is nowhere near ready for primetime, and I can't recommend it for anyone who wants to sync more than a very small amount of simple contacts.

wow alex- that is really messed up :( I didn't have any problems like that with mine :confused: but then again, I don't have terribly many saved either... Did you send them what you just posted so they can be working on it as well?

There are many stories like mine already in the support forum there, I guess I had hoped they had worked it out and something weird had happened to cause the other complaints, but nope. :(