From a first world perspective, where we are connected 24/7, leaving a digital trail with almost everythoing we do, it is hard to fathom this jet being missing for so long. However, its still a big world. And when you fly over the ocean and certain countrys you are effectivly off the grid. As has been discussed over the weeks, it only takes a few switches turned to off to make a jet go silent. I think we have a hard time grasping the fact the technology does not cover the entire planet. (thank goodness)
There may be relavent satelite photos that may have captured the crash debris. But it takes a huge amount of human analysis to go over it all. Once the airplane turned off course with unknown intentions, it exponentialy complicated the possible location.
My bet is it will be missing for a few years. Then after we all forget about it, a piece will wash up on a beach someplace.
With the amount of world attention this is getting, we actualy could comb over a vast amount of satelite data with crowd sourcing-getting a couple of 100,000 folks to look at a small piece of ocean we could probably cover the entire crash area in a day. Here is one site that tries to do this. Not sure how effective they are:
Tomnod