I will not mourn the apparent passing, since I suspect it has simply decided to go on holiday with the rest of us.  It has asked us all to use alternatives while it is out; I prefer google's advanced search function where I limit the search to the www.halowars.com domain..

As for the number of lines of code; the search bar is actual a bit more complex than you would think. It is constantly indexing new posts and synchronizing said indexes across the multiple servers that make up the forums.  Though I agree its failures are annoying.