Silvery - 7:26 pm on Nov 30, 2009 (gmt 0)

Googlebot automatically "throttles up" and "throttles down" on making requests, trying to dynamically adjust so that their requests do not negatively impact server performance. I think that automatic throttling is likely unrelated to page load time experienced by endusers -- a page could deliver quick from the server and still take a long time to render in a browser if designed nonoptimally. (Of course, it should go without saying that if your server grinds down to so slow that Googlebot cannot effectively crawl the site, this would eventually impact search performance and attendant rankings.)

vordmeister, care to share who your data center host is?!? Having it catch fire is a pretty dramatic contretemps! Was it in Europe?