Syncing information has become really important, simply because we all have all sorts of accounts on the web and usually more than one devices to work with.
Spanning Sync is a nifty little app that syncs your Google Calendar and iCal together. The app is really easy to set up on your Mac. It gets installed in your preferences pane and all you need to start using it is your Google login details.
Once open, just select either the calendars or contacts tab depending on what you want to sync. If you have more than one calendar and contact group on either iCal or in Google, you can select which ones to merge or sync them all together.
You'll have to choose between either merging or simply replacing one with another. Also beware that Spanning Sync does not support same contact info yet, so if you choose to merge some of your contacts might appear twice.