what's the best business you've ever seen?
jmorr: Interesting types of examples so far - not many are focused on "best" defined by investment merits, which was my first inclination.  I tend to think of businesses as being great in those terms - requiring little incremental financial capital to support significant growth opportunities at high incremental margins, protected from competitive encroachment, etc.  Others have already identified some of these from among the well known large businesses, so here are two less well known (or at least not as often thought of) in this vein: wireless towers and WoW (World of Warcraft - or I would have said so before this issue I just saw via google regarding losing Chinese users).  The former are local monopolies protected by very strong NIMBY characteristics, have fixed costs that are not subject to significant inflation, and have attractive growth prospects as cell density continues to go up.  The latter is just a phenomenal business, though how long it lasts is certainly open to debate...