My contacts are perfect on Gmail, no pollution at all. I use Contacts extensibly (birthdays, addresses, notes and all). They are all synchronized with my OS X Contacts as well, photos included. How are yours getting polluted?
+1 to Masnick. Google Contacts wreaks havoc (when it actually syncs) on my nicely organized vCard-based Contacts, especially when they duplicate cards that are in different or special groups.
