diff --git a/gcloud/__init__.py b/gcloud/__init__.py
index 8c1c7b4e97e26..b5b48594f5d27 100644
--- a/gcloud/__init__.py
+++ b/gcloud/__init__.py
@@ -14,6 +14,8 @@
 
 """GCloud API access in idiomatic Python."""
 
-from pkg_resources import get_distribution
-
-__version__ = get_distribution('gcloud').version
+try:
+    from pkg_resources import get_distribution
+    __version__ = get_distribution('gcloud').version
+except ImportError:  # pragma: NO COVER
+    __version__ = None
diff --git a/gcloud/connection.py b/gcloud/connection.py
index b4ae2f6ca76f4..5478c4beb55bb 100644
--- a/gcloud/connection.py
+++ b/gcloud/connection.py
@@ -14,10 +14,10 @@
 
 """ Shared implementation of connections to API servers."""
 
-from pkg_resources import get_distribution
-
 import httplib2
 
+import gcloud
+
 
 class Connection(object):
     """A generic connection to Google Cloud Platform.
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ class Connection(object):
     _EMPTY = object()
     """A pointer to represent an empty value for default arguments."""
 
-    USER_AGENT = "gcloud-python/{0}".format(get_distribution('gcloud').version)
+    USER_AGENT = "gcloud-python/{0}".format(gcloud.__version__)
     """The user agent for gcloud-python requests."""
 
     def __init__(self, credentials=None):