This is an example of a feature which could significantly degrade the experience for readers; see the example I gave three years ago in T40403#477014. This feature is highly useful for editors as part of a workflow management tool. This creates a tension where there is a useful feature that we want to be available to people, but also not exposed so clearly that it can allow readers to degrade their experience.

That feature from Google is interesting; it doesn't sort strictly by date as users request, but instead works similarly to our prefer-recent functionality (see screenshot below, where the results are still ordered according to relevance in the time period). It's also somewhat buried, with you having to click on the advanced search button and choose some configuration, likely to balance the concerns I listed above.

:)

Wow, I didn't notice that! Thanks for pointing it out. That was so buried I didn't even notice it, and actually found a pretty bad UI bug when I used it. I guess that tells you something about how often it's used...

I think this task should be marked as a duplicate of T40403: Sortable search results.