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In settings go to apps, select the app you wish to stop updating and then select disable. All updates to the app will be removed and the app will no longer update.

Default apps are often built-in and can't be uninstalled. But you can disable them. See https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/2521768 for details. If you do this then it's worth uninstalling any updates to the app first, to free-up some space.

The apps are typically installed to a read-only System partition.

With 'root' access, it's possible to remove them via a superuser app or adb - or it used to be the case.

True, that bit is a bit annoying, but again, not being able to switch out or uninstall default apps is much worse than just not being able to uninstall default apps.