diff --git a/apiclient/discovery.py b/apiclient/discovery.py
index ea61919..eb179ff 100644
--- a/apiclient/discovery.py
+++ b/apiclient/discovery.py
@@ -59,6 +59,9 @@
 from oauth2client.util import positional
 from oauth2client.anyjson import simplejson
 
+# The client library requires a version of httplib2 that supports RETRIES.
+httplib2.RETRIES = 1
+
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 URITEMPLATE = re.compile('{[^}]*}')