Nowadays there are many ways to circumvent Google’s services for mobile, which is especially important to Android users who would like to take the next step in freeing their Android. There are other email providers, other PIM syncing services and other application distributors. However I would assume that sometimes a couple of non-free applications might be holding users back from freeing their Android, for instance because no free alternative is available or because their friends are tied in a non-free environment. Luckily the Linux Action Show made me aware of GooglePlayDownloader a project which enables the user to download .apk files from the Google Play Store whilst circumventing the logging and syncing required by Google. This is of course a cat and mouse game, with the associated projects reverse-engineering the API’s and store navigation to keep track of this moving target. With most software creators targeting just the Google Play Store for Android applications, this is a valuable addition to the set of tools that aid in freeing mobile users.