This has been present on google for months now; a quick search shows Labs announcing it May 24, 2009. That this is making HN now goes to show that most people s

This has been present on google for months now; a quick search shows Labs announcing it May 24, 2009. That this is making HN now goes to show that most people still don't use the "Show Options" search modifications in the left sidebar, instead refining their search through additional words and search autocomplete. I find it interesting that Google continues to hide these in a user-initiated sidebar in the interest of "sparse", while Y! and Bing now show search refinements by default.