Google+ is slowly merging into everything Google is doing. A natural hook up is with Gmail. Already, the contacts in the chat box have been expanded with the addition of people from your Circles.
Now, the contacts manager in Gmail includes the people from your Google+ Circles as well, as Google Operating System noticed. The tool now also includes data from Google+ for your existing contacts if there is any.
The extension is natural and it's also useful, if you have enough friends that have set up shop on Google+. It comes even more handy for new contacts, you can get a lot more info on them from their Google+ profiles.
Traditionally, the Contacts tab in Gmail has had data from contacts you've added in Gmail and, relatively more recently, from the Android address book, if you sync contacts.
Now, below the My Contacts group, you'll see your Google+ Circles. If the email address of one of your contacts matches the one used by someone from your circles, the info from the social network is added to the regular data, but it's still separated.
That said, you may still need to manually edit and merge some contacts that show up with different info in your My Contacts list and your Circles.
The addition of Google+ data makes sense for Google as it wants to have only one friends and contacts list in all of its products, with combined data.
If anything, you can expect even more sharing and merging of data and features between Google products, just like the company intended when it launched Google+.
On the one hand, it's a good thing, focus and interoperability between products makes life easier for users. On the other hand, it's going to be increasingly hard not to have a Google+ profile, even a basic one, and go on using Google products.
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