Applications are being pushed/installed OTA without my permission - STOP IT

Question

OK, I am aware of the plethora of options in managing applications as well as the multitude of individuals who are responsible or not for the applications on the devices.  To cover some of these:
- Phone manufacturer wants to sell phones to Verizon and needs to get the phone, OS, and EVERY application accepted by Verizon (that means that Verizon decides, agrees, and specifies EVERY application that is on the phone when you buy it - NOT the phone manufacturer, not the OS developer, not the application developer).  This is done at the time of phone qualification and Verizon has the last word bar none.
- For Android phones Google manages and owns the marketplace and they have had to make alterations for many entities including phone manufacturers, application vendors (mostly game apps), phone companies (Verizon is the most demanding).  Google has a lot of freedom, but they are not solely responsible for an application "push" (update).
So, when I get a Verizon device (phone or tablet) that includes pre-installed application that I cannot remove then the primary entity involved in this decision is Verizon.  Not google, and other than the choice to allow the applications use it is not the application developer.
Application updates are driven through google marketplace and, for the most part are only updated after the user agrees (or selects "auto update").  Verizon and google decide which of those applications that were pre-installed are "auto updated".
When I get a ton of data traffic on my data plan to auto update a bunch of applications I get concerned that I will be FORCED to accept the abuse of my data plan.  When 90% of these applications are amongst those that I would not take an update by choice, would uninstall were I given the opportunity I am rather upset that my storage, data usage, and system CPU are now taxed to accomodate a worthless endeavor (updating worthless applications).
Verizon is the only organization that had the ability to make and enforce the decision NOT to install nor update these applications so Verizon should ensure there is an option to avoid this waste.
Amongst those applications Verizon should allow me to remove or not take updates for:
- Face book
- cordy
- email
- gmail (both email and gmail are poorly implemented apps)
- calendar
- google goggles
- visual VM
- latitude
- car home
- dungeon defenders
- youtube
- movie studio
- browser (on the xoom the browser sux compared to opera and it crashed for the first few months)
- camera

Answer 1

fmotta wrote:
I only wish I had your luck in avoiding update notifications.
I have turned off automatic updates for these apps.  However, since marketplace is nicely checking for updates on all apps I get notification of updates even for apps I do not want (such as those listed).  So, every other hour (at least) I get an indicator telling me to update those applications (that I really want to have go away).
When I get useful updates I cannot use the "update all" option as I have these annoying apps waiting to consume resources by updating rather than uninstalling.  So, yesterday I got to manually accept 4-6 application updates on each device avoiding those applications I do not want updated.
Really Verizon? You really want me to play these stupid video games on my tablet THAT badly!?
Hmm. Nope, deselecting the automatic updates worked for me.
Also, the bloatware really doesn't use that much space. The apps you've downloaded use more space than the ones already on the phone. So much so that you can't even notice them when it comes to memory or battery usage.