Could not find manifest-merger.jar (com.android.tools.build:manifest-merger:26.1.2) error after gradle 4.4 upgrade

The solution is quite simple, you have to invert jcenter() and google() repositories in your root build.gradle file (in mine jcenter() was first):

buildscript {

    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath 'com.android.tools.build:gradle:3.1.2'


        // NOTE: Do not place your application dependencies here; they belong
        // in the individual module build.gradle files
    }
}

allprojects {
    repositories {
        google()
        jcenter()
    }
}

I solved this by upgrading gradle wrapper version to gradle-4.10.1-all.zip

gradle-wrapper.properties

distributionUrl=https\://services.gradle.org/distributions/gradle-4.10.1-all.zip

Cleaning up Gradle cache (~/.gradle/caches) worked for me.