I see that this breaks py34 in the Travis CI integration tests on Github. I haven't looked into that yet.
Code updated.
[Waiting to see if this has the desired effect on Travis integration.]
This change seems to do what it is meant to do, but I wouldn't submit until the issue of test that hang and eventually time out in Python 3 is solved.
There are duplicate changes in https://codereview.appspot.com/334530043/, what is the status of this CL? Please close if no longer relevant