diff --git a/docs/topics/settings.rst b/docs/topics/settings.rst
index 4b3dbc78f..d7a7d7fcf 100644
--- a/docs/topics/settings.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/settings.rst
@@ -418,6 +418,15 @@ supported.  Example::
 
     DOWNLOAD_DELAY = 0.25    # 250 ms of delay 
 
+This setting is also affected by the :setting:`RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY`
+setting (which is enabled by default). By default, Scrapy doesn't wait a fixed
+amount of time between requests, but uses a random interval between 0.5 and 1.5
+* :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY`.
+
+Another way to change the download delay (per spider, instead of globally) is
+by using the ``download_delay`` spider attribute, which takes more precedence
+than this setting.
+
 .. setting:: DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT
 
 DOWNLOAD_TIMEOUT
@@ -677,6 +686,27 @@ Example::
 
     NEWSPIDER_MODULE = 'mybot.spiders_dev'
 
+.. setting:: RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY
+
+RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY
+------------------------
+
+Default: ``True``
+
+If enabled, Scrapy will wait a random amount of time (between 0.5 and 1.5
+* :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY`) while fetching requests from the same
+spider.
+
+This randomization decreases the chance of the crawler being detected (and
+subsequently blocked) by sites which analyze requests looking for statistically
+significant similarities in the time between their times.
+
+The randomization policy is the same used by `wget`_ ``--random-wait`` option.
+
+If :setting:`DOWNLOAD_DELAY` is zero (default) this option has no effect.
+
+.. _wget: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/manual/wget.html
+
 .. setting:: REDIRECT_MAX_TIMES
 
 REDIRECT_MAX_TIMES
diff --git a/scrapy/__init__.py b/scrapy/__init__.py
index 0051aa75e..6f8ca15e6 100644
--- a/scrapy/__init__.py
+++ b/scrapy/__init__.py
@@ -2,8 +2,8 @@
 Scrapy - a screen scraping framework written in Python
 """
 
-version_info = (0, 8, 0, '', 0)
-__version__ = "0.8"
+version_info = (0, 9, 0, 'dev')
+__version__ = "0.9-dev"
 
 import sys, os
 
diff --git a/scrapy/conf/default_settings.py b/scrapy/conf/default_settings.py
index 8892e41b4..76feb0c6f 100644
--- a/scrapy/conf/default_settings.py
+++ b/scrapy/conf/default_settings.py
@@ -122,6 +122,8 @@ MYSQL_CONNECTION_SETTINGS = {}
 
 NEWSPIDER_MODULE = ''
 
+RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY = True
+
 REDIRECT_MAX_METAREFRESH_DELAY = 100
 REDIRECT_MAX_TIMES = 20 # uses Firefox default setting
 REDIRECT_PRIORITY_ADJUST = +2
diff --git a/scrapy/core/downloader/manager.py b/scrapy/core/downloader/manager.py
index b53db5811..aec17b05e 100644
--- a/scrapy/core/downloader/manager.py
+++ b/scrapy/core/downloader/manager.py
@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
 Download web pages using asynchronous IO
 """
 
+import random
 from time import time
 
 from twisted.internet import reactor, defer
@@ -20,15 +21,21 @@ class SpiderInfo(object):
 
     def __init__(self, download_delay=None, max_concurrent_requests=None):
         if download_delay is None:
-            self.download_delay = settings.getfloat('DOWNLOAD_DELAY')
+            self._download_delay = settings.getfloat('DOWNLOAD_DELAY')
         else:
-            self.download_delay = download_delay
-        if self.download_delay:
+            self._download_delay = float(download_delay)
+        if self._download_delay:
             self.max_concurrent_requests = 1
         elif max_concurrent_requests is None:
             self.max_concurrent_requests = settings.getint('CONCURRENT_REQUESTS_PER_SPIDER')
         else:
             self.max_concurrent_requests =  max_concurrent_requests
+        if self._download_delay and settings.getbool('RANDOMIZE_DOWNLOAD_DELAY'):
+            # same policy as wget --random-wait
+            self.random_delay_interval = (0.5*self._download_delay, \
+                1.5*self._download_delay)
+        else:
+            self.random_delay_interval = None
 
         self.active = set()
         self.queue = []
@@ -44,6 +51,12 @@ class SpiderInfo(object):
         # use self.active to include requests in the downloader middleware
         return len(self.active) > 2 * self.max_concurrent_requests
 
+    def download_delay(self):
+        if self.random_delay_interval:
+            return random.uniform(*self.random_delay_interval)
+        else:
+            return self._download_delay
+
     def cancel_request_calls(self):
         for call in self.next_request_calls:
             call.cancel()
@@ -99,8 +112,9 @@ class Downloader(object):
 
         # Delay queue processing if a download_delay is configured
         now = time()
-        if site.download_delay:
-            penalty = site.download_delay - now + site.lastseen
+        delay = site.download_delay()
+        if delay:
+            penalty = delay - now + site.lastseen
             if penalty > 0:
                 d = defer.Deferred()
                 d.addCallback(self._process_queue)