Yep. When you’re not even in these apps or looking for something to read, these apps — all from Google — want to shove even more news into your life.

But… Why?

So why has Google been on this news crusade as of late? I have a pretty good theory: Facebook and Twitter.

Social networks are increasingly becoming the primary source of news and what’s going on in people’s lives. Google+ was a fine networking and shared-interest tool, but it didn’t fill the same need for many as Twitter or Facebook. And they’ve since decided to shutter the product altogether, meaning they need a new way to control users.

This is Google’s play: preempt the Twitters and Facebooks of the world by using the massive asset of a 2+ billion-person install base. Bake these news experiences into every corner of the world’s most popular operating system. Push stories to people before they open the Twitter app or head to Facebook.com.

The problem I have with this: it’s really bad. The algorithms are poor, the targeting is mediocre, and too often I end up with poorly-written half stories popping up to draw my attention.

What Google Needs to Do

Rather than pointing out inadequacies in frustration and leaving it at that, I have a few proposals for how Google could salvage this situation. I’m not leaving the ecosystem any time soon, and their hardware efforts are better than ever. Here’s what Google needs to do:

Focus their news efforts

Stop shoving news into every single app, and make One True News App. For example, revert News & Weather back to being a great weather app, and focus in on Newsstand. Get these weird duplicate news feeds out of Chrome and my home screen. If you want to be able to surface stories in a useful feed, Google Now had APIs for third party apps, and it worked. Plug Newsstand into that. If you want to push notifications for stories, have Newsstand take care of that as well. Carefully separate the sources I’ve explicitly subscribed to (like paid magazine and newspaper subscriptions) from any algorithmic “from around the web” list. When I want to read my paid sources, I am looking for just those sources. When I want to browse for something new, I want to browse new things.

But above all, keep Newsstand as your one focused news experience.

Curate

Throwing lots of data at algorithms might work for search results, but it’s not working for news.

Curate the top stories in each category and topic based on completeness and quality. If I’m interested in Destiny, Pixel phones, and Linux, I don’t want or need to see every possible story that contains those keywords. Instead, I want the most interesting, engaging, and original stories for those topics. I’m already inundated with content from everywhere else; break through the noise instead of amplifying it. More aggressively curate based on quality: let known high quality publications and original sources bubble up, while clickbait and unoriginal stories sink.

Fix the targeting

I’m on a Google phone running Google’s OS using Google services reading news in a Google app. Use that to make my experience better.

If I’m signed into Chrome—which provides the in-app browser to third-party apps like Twitter — and I read a story that would otherwise show up in my news, mark it as read there, too. Deprioritize it so my unread and interesting news isn’t buried in what I’ve already read elsewhere. If I don’t usually open or engage with certain types of stories, take that as a signal that they’re uninteresting to me! Don’t show it to me later that day, and the next day, and the next.

What YOU Can Do

While Google ultimately controls the default experiences in Android and their app, there are a few steps users can take to mitigate the barrage. This doesn’t remove the burden from Google to do the above, but hopefully if enough people take these steps, they’ll notice and fix things sooner.

Send Feedback

Each Google app has a built-in feedback mechanism where you can send the app’s team at Google suggestions, complaints, and other feedback.

In the Google app (or the Google Feed if it’s on your home screen), press the ⋮ overflow menu and choose Send feedback. Tell the team what you think of the new Feed behavior and if you miss the old Google Now behavior, then send it off.

In News & Weather and Newsstand, open the respective app’s ☰ navigation menu, choose Help & Feedback, then Send feedback. Let the team know how you use the app and if the new behavior is working for you or not.

In Chrome, press the ⋮ overflow menu, scroll down, and choose Send feedback. Tell the team whether or not you like or use the articles appearing in the new tab page, plus any other feedback you may have for Chrome.

You won’t get a reply, but according to the Google support forums, the feedback sent this way does go to the actual teams responsible for the products.

Disable features

Some of the news features can be disabled from within the apps; this won’t fix the poor targeting within News & Weather or Newsstand, but it can get the news out of your face so often. And if Google collects feature usage metrics, perhaps they’ll realize something is terribly wrong.

If you’re using the Pixel or Google Now launcher, you can disable the Google Feed. In the Google app or the Feed screen, hit the ⋮ overflow menu, choose Settings, go to Your feed, and disable the Show feed switch. If the blank feed is completely useless to you, you can remove the Google app from the leftmost home screen as well: long-press a blank spot on the launcher, choose Home Settings, and disable the Display Google app switch.

To reduce the amount of news-related notifications, head into the relevant app and look for notification toggles. If you’re sick of all notifications from the app, you can also long-press a notification and disable notifications from the app there, or head to your phone’s global settings, look for Apps, and disable notifications under the respective app.

Turning off the articles in Chrome is a little more complex (and might become impossible in a future update). For now you can type chrome://flags into the address bar, search for #enable-ntp-remote-suggestions and disable it.

Uninstall unused apps

If you don’t use News & Weather or Newsstand, the easiest solution is to uninstall or disable them. Long-press the relevant app icon on the home screen, then drag it to the top of the screen to the Uninstall icon. Alternatively, head to your phone’s settings and look for the Apps section. Choose the offending app, then hit the Uninstall or Disable button.