internet - My theory about the "Google block"

Yesterday Asiapundit discovered that the new censored Google.cn service was blocked by the Chinese filters and that must have caused some concern at those Google-people who did not celebrate Chinese New Year.
I had some talks about the issue and discussed with different people involved. Since there are no clear policies, I can only give my theory. The initial thought that the Chinese censor was playing a practical joke, or even serious about blocking the Google-service. During Chinese New Year everybody is gone from work, including the Chinese censor. The idea websites would get blocked as a deliberate act during Chinese New Year unless there is really a major crisis would be odd. Since everybody is on a holiday, no major crisis can be identified anyway.
So, what happened? During the holidays Chinese internet users go massively online. They are mostly under-25 years old who are bored to death and turn to the internet. On top of that China Telecom and other providers offer discounted internet access for the dialup users. So, more than once you would see during those holidays that the internet as a whole breaks down, since the Beijing-based filters cannot deal with the traffic. Outside the holiday-period there might be some delay, but that would come together during the holidays.
That means that also not-blocked websites get stuck in the system and when you check the traffic (as I and Asiapundit both did), you see a similar pattern as for officially blocked websites. So, Google.cn did indeed get blocked, but it does not seem a deliberate act by the Chinese censor.