My Google Chat Lists Everyone On The Planet

Google Talk Friends List Getting Out of Hand? Try Bankruptcy

If you are also troubled by this “friend overload” problem, try the bankruptcy route – that means remove all existing friends from Google Talk in one go and make a fresh start. You can either manually remove Google Talk friends by right-clicking each of the names or use the help of GMail.

Here’s how you can do the clean up:

Step 1: Export all your existing GMail contacts to a CSV file. [Contacts > Export > CSV]

Step 2: Goto GMail Contacts again, click the “All Contacts” tab and scroll to bottom of the screen. Do a “Select All” and click “Delete” – this will also wipe off all your current friends from Google Talk.

Step 3: Now just import the original contact CSV file back into GMail so you don’t lose any of the email contacts. [Contact -> Import -> CSV] None of your GMail contacts would show up as friends in Google Talk now.

You can now selectively add friends to Google Talk. Click the Add button in Google Talk and tick the GMail contacts whom you would love to see in your Google Talk as well.

To adjust Gmail to not add contacts to chat automatically go to gmail > settings > chat
No I don't want to chat with the plaintiff"s attorney!