(Top) Harinarayan and Rajaraman

London, Dec. 9: A pair of Indian engineers, who twice passed up the chance to buy Google, today secured $20 million of funding for their own search site — Kosmix.

In 1998, Google founder Sergey Brin offered fellow Stanford University PhD students Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan the chance to buy Google for $1 million. They said no.

A year later, with Amazon’s backing, Rajaraman and Harinarayan offered £300 million.

But Brin, and Google co-founder Larry Page, refused to accept less than $1 billion.

Today, the Indian Internet entrepreneurs have secured $20 million of new funding from Time Warner for their own search site — Kosmix.

The company has also secured the backing of Motorola chairman and chief executive Ed Zander and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. “Google works if you know exactly what you’re looking for,” Rajaraman said.

“But if you’ve only got a vague idea, it can be quite hard to find the answer. Kosmix allows you to browse a whole topic and suggests areas that it thinks you might be interested in.”

Rachel Lam, senior vice- president and group managing director of Time-Warner Investments, said: “Kosmix’s technology and the company’s innovations around the traditional online publishing model could represent a paradigm shift in how targeted content is delivered to consumers.

“Kosmix’s management team is at the forefront of a new online business model, one that goes beyond banner ads to reach consumers at the moments when they are most receptive and engaged, and importantly, one that should continue to generate strong growth, even in today’s economic environment.”