We don’t need to justify or persuade you to move to Gmail. We all are moving to Gmail (and the new feature does make it more interesting). In the process, we want our contacts to move with us and many have engaged in the cumbersome process of copying one by one. Shame on you! Google guys will never make our lives that hard, and they have a way to import contacts in a bulk from outlook and hotmail live.
For importing address book, you need a .CSV file which is a simple Excel sheet containing the fields such as First Name, Last Name, Email Address etcetera.

So don’t jump the guns and open Excel, follow the steps given below for ensuring smooth, non tedious transfer:
From Outlook:
•    Select File > Import/Export > Export from the main menu
•    Choose Comma Separated Values (Windows) > Select “Contacts” > Save exported file as .csv
From Hotmail Live:
•    Sign in to your Hotmail account.
•    Click the Contacts list on the bottom left of the page.
•    Click the Manage drop-down menu at the top of the Contacts list and select Export.
•    On the page that appears, click the Export Contacts button.
•    When you’re prompted to open or save the file, click Save as .csv.
•    Select a location to save the file, and click Save.
We have completed 50% of the process. All we need to do now is to import it in to your Gmail account.
1.    Sign in to your Gmail.
2.    Click Contacts (located below your list of views) on any Gmail page.
3.    Click Import in the top portion of the Contact Manager.
4.    Click the Browse or Choose File button and locate the CSV file you have to upload.
5.    Select the file and click the Import button
Congratulations, you have successfully uploaded the document.  Gmail will display the number of contacts imported. Moving to Gmail just got a whole lot easier, Let your friends in on this secret.