I am in the process of moving out some contacts from Google Contacts, specifically those that I do not have a Gmail address. It’s a way for me to give these people a tiny bit more privacy, as I’m doing a cleanup of my contact list. My concern is that Google will still keep their data even after I delete it from my end. Is it so? Or does removing a contact really delete it from there?
Contacts has a Trash can. Deleted contacts are deleted after 30 days. You can empty the Trash yourself. Log into the web interface and find Trash on the left.
Thats just a user frontend showing your personal view of things . Nobody outside Google knows for sure if they really remove it from their end. All we know is they COULD keep a copy for themselves.