The 5 Businesses you most admire?

[tikay]

I'll get it started with my fab five.......

Berkshire Hathaway

google

Miscosoft

Apple

Ryanair


What chances anyone else picks the same 5?

[Graham C]

Google for sure, they're an incredible company, the things they are into is fantastic.
Virgin
Apple
Microsoft

Not sure about a 5th, I'll have a think about it, possibly Amazon but at the same time, they annoy me. 

[tikay]

Virgin? Are you sure? Why? Can't think of a single redeeming feature.

[bobAlike]

Can you admire a business even if you don't like what they are doing?

I think Google as a start up was incredible and how they developed in to what they are now. I just don't like the ethics behind some of the operations. The one that comes to mind is the WiFi snooping debarcle?

Also don't like how they make money from us by owning data about us. OK so every large corporation is the same but I still don't like it.

[mulhuzz]

I love Google and their Skunkworks approach to huge problems.

When you start with the premise that more data can solve more problems and that Google has more data than anyone, they do some quite amazing things.

Similarly, I'm also a big fan of Tesla and pretty much anything Elon Musk is into like SpaceX.

MarsOne (not sure it's a company as such) is also incredible.

[tikay]

I love Google and their Skunkworks approach to huge problems.

When you start with the premise that more data can solve more problems and that Google has more data than anyone, they do some quite amazing things.

Similarly, I'm also a big fan of Tesla and pretty much anything Elon Musk is into like SpaceX.

MarsOne (not sure it's a company as such) is also incredible.

Agree with Tesla, a company that does things very differently to most. They tore up the traditional business model & started afresh. Excellent choice.

[George2Loose]

KFC
McDonald's
Burger King
My local kebab house
Nando's

[Graham C]

It's only the free shipping that annoys me with Amazon.  We send things out all the time but people think postage is expensive because Amazon offered it free for years (even now you only have to spend £20).  We have to pay for it and it's pretty costly and leaves us unable to compete on a lot of our products because we can't offer free shipping.  There are sometimes items you can buy and get free postage and the postage costs more than the item is worth - how can that be good business?  It's pretty much the only reason, it's just my little bugbear with them - free competition and all that I know.   They are a great example of simply selling items as a business, no need for their own products, they simply retail products that you can get anywhere but have done it well.  

Virgin, what's wrong with that?  You may not like the bloke but he's done bloody well for himself.  Maybe that counts as Richard rather than the Virgin company.  Fair enough

Every company is gathering data about us all the time, I think we have to just accept that these days, you can't escape it.  We advertise using Adwords and the level of detail you can narrow things down to is amazing.  You can really target your ads to the people you want to see them.  

The thing is it's not just that, they have Google Earth - mapping the world??  That's bloody amazing.  Then they have the self drive cars, the Google Glass, they even have photo editing software plug-ins, the variety of things that Google are into is staggering.  I bet we don't even know much of what Google are up to and will only find out in a few years.

[bobAlike]

Have Amazon actually made any money yet? Their business model will only start making money when they own everything and then start charging correctly for the services they provide.

[mulhuzz]

Have Amazon actually made any money yet? Their business model will only start making money when they own everything and then start charging correctly for the services they provide.

Their plan is to run break even for the next while and theirs a really strange, but possibly genius, vision behind it. I'll see if I can dig out an absolutely fascinating article I read on it some time ago.

Edit: lies. They turned a huge (for them) profit q2 this year. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hey-look-amazon-actually-turned-profit/

[Graham C]

Have Amazon actually made any money yet? Their business model will only start making money when they own everything and then start charging correctly for the services they provide.

Hope so, the chap that owns/founded it is worth $50 BILLION!!

50 bloody billion!

[mulhuzz]

Amazon article: fascinating.

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-has-no-profits-and-why-it-works

[tikay]

Amazon is another I might have included. They are now the world's largest retailer. Not bad for a business that has only been around a decade or two.

Rolls Royce ( aero and marine engines) is another tremendous company. And they actually.......MAKE THINGS.

[bobAlike]

Amazon is another I might have included. They are now the world's largest retailer. Not bad for a business that has only been around a decade or two.

Rolls Royce ( aero and marine engines) is another tremendous company. And they actually.......MAKE THINGS.

I've been working with Rolls-Royce now for over 2 years and the funny thing is it never even crossed my mind to list them down in this thread. Yes they have some amazing products but they do so much wrong business wise that they are not operating at their true potential. Wish I could say more

[Nakor]

Google
BBC
Consort Medical
Moy Park
Windboats Marine