Fix for Error: more than one package with name 'com.google.android.gms.license' error without changing build.gradle

As of last Thurs, March 22, Google released a Google Play Services update which caused Cordova Android builds which were previously working to fail with the error message -

Error: more than one package with name ‘com.google.android.gms.license’.

Right now the prescribed workaround is to modify the /platforms/android/build.gradle file to point to an older version of Google services in the directory, but we don’t include /platform code in our repo and instead generate these files at compile time on our build server.

Has anyone found a way to fix or work around this issue without modifying code in /platforms?

You could look for a plugin or hook that modifies that file somehow during the build process.