Okay, I don't want to rain on anybody's parade here, but isn't this old news?

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/08/easy-way-to-find-recent-web-pages.html

It's one thing for it to be an advanced search feature, but a totally different thing to have it directly next to the search bar for EVERYONE to use and see. This is definitely news worth sphinning.

Matt Cutts also posted a fortnight ago:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/useful-google-feature-better-date-search

Not quite old news. Yes, you can date search. But normally, you don't see a date search drop down on the search results.

I thougth what might have happened is this person may have searched from the advanced page by date, which then puts the drop down out there. My comment on SEJ is still in moderation there, but I'd said:

Hmm. I wonder if he did an advanced search by date and didn’t realize this box shows up as a result. Look:

Did you by chance do a search of the advanced search page first? Because if you do, that’s what happens. Watch:

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=recruiting&hl=en&num=10&as_qdr=d

See, I searched on advanced, then got that box showing on the results. I’ve trimmed off the parameters of the URL that aren’t necessary to make it appear.

Also source story submitted to Sphinn already here:
http://sphinn.com/story/7464

And cheezhead who originally spotted this says he's 99% sure he didn't cause it by hitting the advanced page first.