Yes, it happens all the time and satellites get hit way less than the earth because, think about it, their surface area is *way* less. Sadly, hitting satellites will make the orbital debris problem worse since every hit just makes more smaller pieces. Even little pieces are a disaster for other satellites at 10km/second, though they fall out of orbit faster.

Interestingly, the frequency of hits is inversely proportional to mass (weight) of the object. Guessing this thing weighs about a 100 tonnes (probably more) and one hits earth every two years (burning up in the atmosphere). That means a 1000 tonne object will hit about every 20 years and a 10000 tonne object every 200 years, etc. ... on average. It also means 1 gram objects (a millionth of a tonne) hit the earth about once a second ... making shooting stars.

I have a simple commercial site that uses Google maps but is otherwise trivial. Using Google webmaster tools tells me my average page load time is 19.5 seconds and slower than 99% of sites. Guess how happy I'm going to be using Google maps if it causes my Google page rank to fall?

Personally I see much faster load times with a 1.5Mbps link. To get to 19.5 seconds implies the timings are coming from robots or customers with slow links or computers.

A knighthood is not a peerage. To be an (English) peer one must be a Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount or Baron. Obviously a peerage is a much bigger deal than a knighthood.