Gmail 2.0 Contact Manager

It appears that Google’s new Gmail 2.0 has been released, but in select theaters only. The new Contact Manager can be accessed however, as a standalone app here.
In just the few minutes that I’ve been poking around, I have very mixed feelings. The Gmail Contact Manager is definitely a great place for some updates because it is one of the most integrated services across Google. I manage a half-dozen Google Groups, and often email things to people right from Google Reader, and the contacts stored in Gmail are very well integrated into these services. I have written before on the necessity for quality integration between services, and contacts is one area where Google does an awesome job.

However, it seems that the updated interface for the Contact Manager is a step in the wrong direction. The rest of the world (Hotmail and Yahoo) work hard to make their web interfaces look just like a pane-based desktop email interface, but Google dared to be different with Gmail and has won a major victory with it, proving that web application interfaces do not need to mimic desktop application interfaces: There is potential for so much more, and Google achieves it again and again. Why, then, do they release the new Contact Manager with an desktop-y pane-based interface?
I think it is a good update, but I feel like Google has failed me.