The only contacts I want on my phone are the 120-ish individuals and companies I phone or email on a frequent basis. I have them in a Google/Gmail contacts group called "phone". This is the group I select for display and they are the only contacts I see.

But Contacts seems to insist on downloading ALL Gmail and Google+ (they appear to be integrated at the Google end) contacts. That amounts to about 10,000 people I have corresponded with at one time or another since 2007.

The Contacts database is about 120MB of my 1GB internal app storage. I can go and clear it out.....and get the space back, but the next time it syncs, it downloads all 10,000+ contacts again.

I guess I could keep the people I want in my phone - physically - and just ensure they are also recorded in my Gmail contacts.....but that seems to reduce the value of the cloud. 

Anyone else annoyed by this? 

Looks like I'll have to go through my Gmail and Google+ and get rid of a lot of people (a big job!).....or switch to a new Gmail account for the phone that has much less history associated with it....and no Google+ contacts. Or....export all my existing contacts and import them to another "archive" account...and wipe out most of them in my main account. That way, at least, I retain my Google Store purchase history on the correct account....and I keep all the contacts (in a safe, non-syncing place).