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Winners Take All | Anand Giridharadas | Talks at Google

Talks at Google · 252.5K views · 2018-10-19 · 1:00:56

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Overview

Anand Giridharadas presents his book Winners Take All at Google, arguing that the global elite's philanthropy and 'win-win' framing preserve the systems that create inequity. He challenges the audience, including Google employees, to examine their own role in that system.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend it as a pointed critique of philanthropy and win-win thinking, delivered inside Google itself, and cite it across threads on wealth, tax and tech power.

Recommended by 9 HN people across 10 months · HN mentions 2018–2026

Topics

Labor, work & inequalityTech industry & business models
Search by tags
philanthropyinequalitywin-wintech elitepolitical economy

What people said

abuob · 2026-06 · Strong recommendation

If you're genuinely curious, a few suggestions that I personally found incredibly enlightening: Anand Giridhardas, Winners Take All: The book is fantastic, there's also his now infamous google talk where he talks about dismantling google: [VIDEO] Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century: Probably the most comprehensive (but at times also longwinded) outline on how wealth inequality comes to be, why it's not good for society and how it could be adressed

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Shacklz · 2021-04 · Strong recommendation

> It's way nicer on our side, where we do win-win deals, and know to be happy, the people around us need to be happy. If you would like this world-view to undergo some critical analysis, I strongly recommend Anand Giridharadas' take in "Winners take All" (condensed in this google-talk here: [VIDEO] ). He specifically addresses the negative points of the "win-win"-mentality, and in my opinion, makes a strong point that a society built on a "win-win" culture is bound to be doomed.

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CharlesColeman · 2019-03 · Strong recommendation

> But a system of philanthropy is inherently biased insofar as since donors can and do choose charitable causes that match their own preferences. Anand Giridharadas goes pretty deeply into that idea in this talk that he did at Google. I highly recommend watching it, I thought it was elucidating. [VIDEO] I want to read his book "Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World" but I haven't gotten to it yet.

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