Impossible to say, though the company that’s likely at the top of the short list is Google.

With $44.63 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet as of Dec. 31, the search behemoth is the most cash-rich tech company among the big dividend holdouts. In fact, it’s now the only tech company with a market cap above $100 billion that doesn’t offer a dividend.

And while Google hasn’t even hinted at offering a dividend anytime soon, some analysts believe the company is the most likely among its peers to consider one.

“We found that Google has the greatest capacity to return cash,” said Barclays analyst Anthony DiClemente.

Why?

“It probably has the most to gain in terms of positive sentiment by doing so, given its propensity for acquisitions and mixed investor sentiment around the Motorola Mobility deal.”

That’s certainly true. But there’s a problem with that view: Google is about to spend $12.5 billion of its cash stash on that Motorola Mobility deal. Now, Motorola Mobility had about $3.5 billion in its own coffers as of December 2011, with an estimated $3.2 billion of it on shore, but it’s unclear whether Google will combine the balance sheets of the two companies. Remember, the deal has yet to be consummated.

And then there’s that $4 billion in debt Google is carrying.

And a host of potentially expensive patent-related actions orbiting Android.

Add to that the fact that a big chunk of Google’s cash is held in overseas accounts and can’t be brought home without a massive tax hit and the company seems a far less likely dividend candidate that it does at first glance.

“With the completion of the Motorola Mobility deal, Google would have only around $3.5 billion in net U.S. cash/investments,” said S&P Capital IQ analyst Scott Kessler. “We think CEO Larry Page has reasons to practically and philosophically favor other uses of capital, and do not see a dividend anytime soon.”

Google shares closed at $539 Tuesday, down more than 3 percent for the day. And down 4.4 percent from last Friday’s close, when no one had any inkling Page wanted to drop $12.5 billion for a pile of patents and a hardware company.

Meanwhile Standard & Poor’s — yes, that Standard & Poor’s — has dropped the stock from a “buy” to a “sell.” Here’s analyst Scott Kessler’s note:

“After further consideration of GOOG’s plans announced yesterday to purchase Motorola Mobility, we see greater risk to the company and stock. We expect the transaction to be consummated next year, but later than early 2012, which GOOG indicated. Moreover, despite MMI’s extensive and valuable patent portfolio, we are not sure it will protect Android from IP issues. We also believe the purchase of MMI would negatively impact GOOG’s growth, margins and balance sheet. Based on revised DCF analysis, we are cutting our 12-month target price.”

Again, always dangerous to read too much into a short-term swing in any company’s stock. But today’s conventional wisdom (again! caveat emptor, etc.) is that Google has spooked Wall Street because it’s not really sure what Google is thinking here: Is it really just buying patent protection, which was the company’s message yesterday? Or is the big plan to create an integrated soup-to-nuts software/hardware mobile phone company, a la Apple?

The latter, Kara Swisher argues convincingly today. And if that’s the case, Page might mollify Wall Street simply by saying that out loud. If, you know, he cared about mollifying Wall Street.

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