Gmail Technical Rant

[sidki3003]

Thanks for the explanations.
That bogus incoming "URL-ID" header got inserted by Proxomitron, for debugging purposes.

I've just made a little experiment:
- loaded: http://picasaweb.google.com/Page.Error/VideoUploadTest (can be any other member directory)
- got above discussed open connection to the 204
- immediately refreshed: http://local.ptron/.pinfo/urls/ (local.ptron is the alias for Proxomitron's web interface)

The local.ptron page only got loaded once the 204 connection was closed (i.e. after 60 seconds).
2 out of 3 local.ptron refreshes ended up with described plain-text garbage instead of the rendered page.

So it could also be Proxomitron (or Fx3's proxy handling), not correctly dealing with the unclosed 204.