With the deep bit situation, the motivation of the 'hackers' seems to be to stimulate the abandonment of deep bit to spread out the mining rate.
An attack on MTGOX could be along similar lines...attempting to force people to use other exchanges.
But has it even been confirmed that it was a ddos or could it just be some growing pains?
ya, im pretty sure the attacks are coming from someone who loves bitcoin and understands(sadly unlike most) that diversification is very important. I for one would love to see people realize just how dangerous such a massive amount of trust in single entities is. unfortunately alot of people still feel very comfortable playing the whole 'monkey see monkey do' game, luckily that is one of the things bitcoin has come to change.