Removing the search function is pretty damn short-sighted. Without a search function on the forums, people will always resort to creating a new thread for something even if there are already a hundred threads on that topic, just because the person has no way of (easily) finding them. Having a search function massively cuts down on all of these new threads that would be created, thereby lowering the total size of your DB as well as saving all of the resources you need for every one of those superfluous threads and and all of the replies in those threads. One person conducting a single search is generally going to take far fewer resources than creating a new thread and multiple replies.
All of that isn't even mentioning the amount of time that would be saved by being able to search, both by the person that ends up creating the thread (waiting around for a reply) and those that reply to it (taking their time to do so). Yes google does exist, but there's a reason virtually every other forum in existence has its own search function: they work far far better than google does at searching a forum. They index new threads as soon as they are created instead of once every couple of days or week, they allow searches by username, of specific forums or combinations of forums, by thread title, with restrictions on the date, and so on. None of that functionality exists in google (except the title and date, which 99% of people don't know how to do anyway). There just isn't any excuse for this forum not to have a search function. In the long run, not having one takes up more resources than having one does, and it saves people huge amounts of time.
