How many times have you called one of your favorite businesses only to realize, the next time you wanted to reach them, you hadn't bothered to create a contact for them? Or you had, but you hadn't put their address or website in the card, because who wants to go through that pain in the butt, am I right?

Google Contacts [on the desktop] to the rescue! In a new feature announced for the desktop contacts site, any time you put a phone number in a new or existing contact card that matches a known business on Google Maps, contacts will then automatically populate the card with the rest of the business info, down to the profile picture. Address, website, and any other phone numbers are added as well. The feature also works for your existing contacts if a number match is found.

The catch is that this feature is only live inside the contacts desktop web preview, as it's the web interface pulling in the information live from Maps. So, this stuff won't show up on your phone - just the information you've entered manually. If you're using the Google dialer with Caller ID by Google, you'll still see what that provides for your contacts on your mobile device, but you won't get the automatic Maps data in your contact card like the address or website. Hopefully Google is working on bringing this new feature to Android, because it's pretty damn sweet.

Source: Google Apps Updates Blog