The Beatles could never write Bad, Running to Stand Still, Bullet the Blue Sky, With or Without You, All I Want is You, Acrobat, Love is Blindness or anything as good as them.
Do I like the Beatles? Sure, I love them. But I just don't see that they did anything as good as U2's best work. No one has.
U2's peers were always the other popular and relevant artists of the current day. Yes, early on they were The Police, Simple Minds, INXS. Later it was REM, Faith No More, Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden. As time went on they outlasted them all and I think as of the 21st century you can only compare them to the upper echelons of Rock history: The Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin.
IMO on their best days they wrote better songs than anyone else up there, they are a better live act, and they've outlasted them all.
I would rather have a new U2 album than a new Beatles, Stones, Floyd, Dylan, Who, or Zeppelin album, that's for sure!