http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-improves-search-for-fresh-documents/

examples are given that show how using the refined Date Search option can just hone in on recently added pages

Who cares about that? I'm sure there is no more than 5 persons each day who use that feature. By accident.

Actually, I think that's a very cool feature now (before, it was kinda useless, if it indeed was just looking at Google's cache date...). But I also think it only belongs on the advanced page, it's not something you want everyday...