diff --git a/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/httpcompression.py b/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/httpcompression.py
index 60d87da7a..b03a29d67 100644
--- a/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/httpcompression.py
+++ b/scrapy/contrib/downloadermiddleware/httpcompression.py
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ class HttpCompressionMiddleware(object):
         return cls()
     
     def process_request(self, request, spider):
-        request.headers.setdefault('Accept-Encoding', 'x-gzip,gzip,deflate')
+        request.headers.setdefault('Accept-Encoding', 'gzip,deflate')
 
     def process_response(self, request, response, spider):
         if isinstance(response, Response):
diff --git a/scrapy/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py b/scrapy/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
index b77226df6..c1a02bbae 100644
--- a/scrapy/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
+++ b/scrapy/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ class HttpCompressionTest(TestCase):
         request = Request('http://scrapytest.org')
         assert 'Accept-Encoding' not in request.headers
         self.mw.process_request(request, self.spider)
-        self.assertEqual(request.headers.get('Accept-Encoding'), 'x-gzip,gzip,deflate')
+        self.assertEqual(request.headers.get('Accept-Encoding'), 'gzip,deflate')
 
     def test_process_response_gzip(self):
         response = self._getresponse('gzip')