If I navigate thru my phone contacts, there are none that are strictly a gmail contact, which is the way I want it.

I regularly export this list, first as a backup, as well as to import it into my desktop contacts.

The strange thing is that when I import it into my desktop contacts, all of my gmail contacts are in the list as well as the regular contacts.

There used to be a settings page in "Accounts and backup" for each google account that gave the user the option of toggling on or off syncing for a whole array of items, but no more. That's how I controlled this behavior in the past.

I'm assuming that this is the root of the problem, and there must be a new location for these sync setting, but I can't find them.