NEW YORK (

MainStreet

) -- Turns out the recipe for cooking

Google's

(GOOG) - Get Report

goose -- or

Amazon's

(AMZN) - Get Report

,

eBay's

(EBAY) - Get Report

,

Facebook's

(FB) - Get Report

or really any Web giant for that matter -- is pretty darn simple.

"Make it like Google," tech entrepreneur Gabriel Weinberg says, "only simpler."

The new search engine DuckDuckGo seems to prove big is no longer beautiful.

Weinberg is founder and CEO of DuckDuckGo, the itty bitty, Valley Forge, Pa.-based search engine that is becoming the business and finance search tool of choice. That, by the way, rewrites entirely the rules of what constitutes a threat to an online business.

See, Weinberg is no heavily financed,

Microsoft

(MSFT) - Get Report

- or

Apple

(AAPL) - Get Report

-scale assault on the search market. Even though its backers are A-list investors such as

Union Square Ventures

, DuckDuckGo has just a $3 million or so war chest. Pocket change, really, for doing battle online.

Nor does Weinberg sit at the helm of an army of coders hacking away at Larry and Sergey's search empire. When I spoke to him on the phone, the remarkably relaxed MIT grad said he employed "about 10" contractors.

"Honestly," he says, "it's really just two of us that do most of the work."

Scarier yet for the supersize-me Web elite, Weinberg can't say exactly how his search engine works. He's not pulling a Jamie Dimon here. He doesn't really need to know.

"We are not reinventing the search process," he said. "We use information from other sources like Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha. I just don't know how they do it."

More Go than Google

What DuckDuckGo does (Weinberg and his wife dreamed up the name up in 2007; he says it has no hidden meaning) is sniff out the best data already on the Web for a given search. Then it rakes out all the unnecessary steps of presenting that information. Separate search pages, found in Google or Bing, are vaporized. Paid links are all but gone -- there is exactly one per query. And simple content -- say, a popular wiki listing -- is displayed right in the initial search results.

But the big plus for investors and businesses increasingly queasy about Google capturing its search data: DuckDuckGo does not track how you use it. It keeps no click records. Buffers no search results. It's just you and your computer. Weinberg has no interest in looking over your shoulder.

"I thought it was kind of creepy that these engines could have all this search data on you," he said.

Ducking for dollars

The overall effect -- and the threat to a Web giant such as Google -- is remarkable. Using DuckDuckGo almost reinvents the investor Web search experience. Try it. Look up a company -- say, Google. You will find a remarkable breakdown of results presented in one long page: the Wikipedia entry, a well-curated list of criticisms of Google, links to online photowikis of company images, all in a clean, clutter-free environment.

Investors will still need Google for stuff such as Web-based word processing, news or Gmail. DuckDuckGo is strictly search. But tens of millions agree with me that DuckDuckGo is the search weapon of choice: It had more than 30 million direct queries in February for example, with

growth

in some metrics at 500% year over year.

Is Weinberg making money? Oh yeah. Remember, there are no salespeople. No tricky local search options. No crazy investments in driverless cars, a la Google. Weinberg simply resells paid search links through established online relationships.

"It's a standard kind of affiliate deal," he said. "

AOL

(AOL)

uses Google search,

Yahoo!

(YHOO)

uses the Microsoft ad platform. We're equivalent to Yahoo in that respect."

The big digital geese are cooked

The big think on DuckDuckGo therefore goes like this: If a well-organized sole proprietor such as Weinberg can hammer Google on its home search turf, somebody else will surely be able do the same for Google Docs word processing, Blogger, Translate -- really any of Google's products. And, strictly speaking, any service offered by any large vertically integrated Web property -- Amazon, Facebook, all of 'em -- is equally at risk.

That in turn questions the basic business strategy of the digital age -- that being big and offering lots of products keeps out competitors.

"I have essentially an endless runway," Weinberg said.

And if Weinberg can do it, others can do it. DuckDuckGo is proving to all of us with skin in the digital game that being a big fat bird on the wire is no longer beautiful.

This commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet guest contributor program. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of TheStreet or its management.