Address Book fails to sync with Google

I am presently syncing my macbook's address book to my google contacts - and this has been working perfectly well up until about a month ago. If I made a change on my android based phone, the changes appeared on gmail contacts - as well as my macbook address book. Any changes from my macbook appeared on my phone - life was great. I recently discovered that my macbook address book was not receiving changes, or updating gmail with any changes. Address Book > Preferences > Accounts > all options were deselected. I selected Synchronize with Google > Configure. I enter my account Google Account and Password and the only thing that happens is "Connecting to Google..." - and that's where it sits. I did a bit of research and found that things were working prior to a MobileMe upgrade - although that is a rough estimate of the last time things were working. I've repaired permissions (as suggested somewhere,) verified my mac is up to date (10.6.6 - and no updates available,) configured MobileMe to sync the contacts only (changes appear correctly on the mobileme site. If I select the Synchronize with Google checkbox and don't attempt to configure - still won't sync. Not sure what else I can do?