nuevasync allows iPhone users to sync their google contacts and calendars with their iPhones. It acts as an Microsoft Exchange server and with Apples enterprise iPhone support features it allows the iPhone to use nuevasync as an exchange server for google calendar and contacts.

It was a breeze to setup and after the 10 minutes it took for me to sign up and setup the exchange account within my iPhone, i had bi-directional syncing between the Google cloud and the iPhone.

Add the iPhones 'fetch' feature and you can get this sync to occur every 15 minutes.

There is no more need for iTunes to act as the conduit between 'googles cloud' and the iPhone. Huzzah.