I know about this question but I don\'t think it helps me and the problem looks slightly different.
I\'m doing this app where I need to implement AppsFlyer for tracking a
I had the same issue and not only I had to downgrade the services but also gradle version.
In my case I had (in app/build.gradle)
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-location:9.0.2'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-maps:9.0.2'
compile 'com.google.android.gms:play-services-gcm:9.0.2'
and (in build.gradle)
classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:2.1.2'
After changing services back to 8.4.0 and gradle to 1.5.0 (Probably higher version is fine also but it was the one I had before upgrading to 2.1.2) everything is fine and FirebaseApp initialization is gone.
Maybe it's not the best solution but I couldn't find anything else.