In cases like this, unfounded speculation can be dangerous, especially with CNN quoting this site!
Many of us here have 1000s of hours in A330. Many of us have been in the middle of squall lines, thunderstorms and the ITCZ.
While these weather phenomena are to be respected by pilots, only very few cases are known whereby they bring down an airliner.
Myself I have witnessed several cases of being hit by a lightning strike in Airbus FBW aircraft (A320/330/340). I lost a radome, I had holes larger than a watermelon burned in my stabiliser, on one incident I had 56 entry and exit holes in the fuselage.
But NEVER ever did I loose control of the aircraft! Sure, you will get a transient power glitch but that is it! Screens come back in a matter of seconds, computers stay on line.
Remember, an airplane acts as a FARADAYS cage whereby the electronic loads stay on the outside of the cage!
The same goes for turbulence. An aircraft like the A330 can withstand a tremendous amount of stress. Just go and look on youtube and search for stress test airplane wing. So in order to have a modern airliner breaking up by turbulence you really need extreme forces, forces very very rarely encountered.
So please, give the crew as well as the manufacturer some credit. Millions of people have flown these aircraft for thousands of hours without incident.
AF pilots are very well trained and this crew had lots of experience.
So something catastrophically happened here, that's for sure, but please refrain from jumping to conclusions too fast. The world is watching!
For those of you using this incident as another Boeing vs Airbus bashing, you should think again. This is not the time nor the place to do so!