BTIG Research media analyst Rich Greenfield, while still opposed to a sale on online content giant Hulu, said in a research note Thursday that the winner in its ongoing auction should be Internet behemoth Google.
Hulu, the online content site owned by Comcast, News Corp., Disney and Providence Equity, has reportedly extended the deadline for initial bids to Friday. Those bids could go as high as $2 billion, according to several published reports,
Greenfield has been a vocal opponent to a Hulu sale -- he called it a "mistake of epic proportions" in one recent note. But in the event a deal is inevitable, Greenfield said a sale to Google would be the best for the industry.
Greenfield named nine other potential suitors for the web content giant -- Amazon, Netflix, Dish Network, DirecTV, Apple, AT&T, Verizon, Yahoo and Microsoft. But he wrote that a Google purchase would be best for the industry for two reasons: Google has deep enough pockets to buy more content and programming rights to keep the service flourishing and its increased presence in online content could spur others to do the same.
