Why is sync with Google removing Address Book contacts' pictures?

Well, that is good news, but nothing is consistent. My iMac and MacBook pro had all the pictures deleted and everyday it decides to sync some back randomly. My iPhone and iPad retained all pictures as well as google contacts. So still not sure what the issue is or real solution.

It looks like this bug started after I installed Cobook.

Most of the contact photos lost are the ones imported via social network integration (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

Anyone else having this bug has Cobook contact manager?

I took a chance and just hit sync on pmov's rationale. Unfortunately, it seems I lost the photos (so far unless they magically come back on a future sync). Dissapointed but glad to get syncing back which is the most important.

Really sorry cweisen you lost your photos trying to duplicate my (more by luck than judgement) successful merges (two of them so far). Some correspondents have mentioned only images that were originally posted on social network sites are being removed.

This would be consistent with my experience as none of my contact photos have been imported or merged from from FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. My photos were manually attached to the original contact probably most commonly in Google (but I couldn't say I've never done it using Apple Address Book). I can say I have never merged my Contacts from a social network site.

Regret I cannot comment on technicalities of this as I don't understand them. Any one know if this behaviour makes sense bearing the condition that the photos have originated from another web site of some kind?

If it helps:

- all my photos were selected from iphoto (on the mac), or via the chrome interface to my google accounts account

- I'm not using CoBook or any comparable additional add-on

However, still pictures are threatening to be lost !

Thanks pmov! I knew the risk I was taking and now that I look again, there are a high number of contacts with pics that weren't stripped. The ones that I seem to have lost are the ones where my contacts had a gmail account (and presumably gmail tried to pull in the pic my contact uses on their gmail account, leaving no pic at all as a result of the conflict). I have backups so I am not stressed about it. Just glad to have the sync back. It was worth it for me.

I used the backup > sync > restore > sync method suggested and it worked temporarily.

I made some changed to contact pictures this morning (via Google Contacts) and a couple hours later I got the warning again that all the images would be deleted upon syncing.

My hunch is this is Google Contacts misbehaving but I can't find anything I've done differently to make The Google angry and want to delete all my contact pictures.

I don't think it is an issue with google. iOS devices don't delete contacts. And after syncing in iMac and MacBook pro, the contact pictures remained on google. The issue is likely with apple OsX.

My pics are back! Strange. Took a couple days but I don't think I am missing any pics now:)

I have a similar experience. On my IOS devices (iPad, iPhone) my contact pictures, and everything else, syncs fine. I followed these instructions for setting up google as an exchange account:

http://support.google.com/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&topic=14252&answer=138740

For the address book sync on my iMac / Macbook air I used the "sync with Google" checkbox. Here my contact pictures do not sync or are removed after a sync. I then set it up again to no avail.

I have resolved it once by backing up a csv file into Apple contacts and merging the duplicate cards but after a while the contact pictures in my address book on the Mac dissapear again.

Does anyone know if it is possible to manually set up the exchange account for google on the mac. This would solve the problem I think.

I tried, and it won't work for contacts. The only way is to set it up within Address Book and sync with Gmail. This must happen every 30 days because here it is a month later and I've got the message again warning that 25% of my contact info is going to change...pain in the rear.

I have the same issue. It's def an issue with google. Google is doing something funky on their side. I would just like it fixed. I've done everything I know how to do on my end to fix it. I've deleted contacts on both sides google and address book. I've tried importing into google only to have it try and delete the photos upon sync. I've tried syncing from address book to google with google being empty and it working only to have the next sync prompt with warning about deleting photos. So if anyone has a fix I'm all ears.

I have same issue (i.e., sync removes some photos from Apple Address Book, but leaves them in Google Contacts). I found that if I go to Google Contacts, and make a slight change to the matching Contact that lost it's photo in Address Book, then the photo is restored to Address Book on the next sync. It doesn't seem to matter what the change is .. I added a space character to the Note field, and saved it, and that was enough to force the sync to restore the photo. I haven't done this for all my contacts, but it worked on the random dozen or so that I tried it on.

Yeah, that solves the problem. Test will be if they maintain the pics and not removed in a few days.

Having the same issue here too. Just guessing, but I'm wondering if Google has updated the API based on something new in Mountain Lion.

Only somewhat logical explanation I can come up with for why this would all of a sudden start stop working right.