Depending on what numbers you believe, cloud is a big opportunity that nearly every VC, including Kleiner Perkins, is already attacking. Market Research Media expects the cloud computing category to grow at 30 percent CAGR and will hit 0 billion worldwide in 2020.

Bloomberg quoted Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy saying the partners are “intrigued by the idea” of such a fund. Whether they actually follow through on the notion, the company has already backed a number of cloud startups. It most recently participated in a million C Series round for AppDynamics , an application performance management company which Murphy said was well suited for cloud computing environments. The firm also staked big-time cloud-based game maker Zynga and Groupon

Given that most startups claim some sort of cloud computing angle, it’s hard to tell anymore what is not a cloud company but some try. Last month, researcher CB Insights estimated that cloud companies represented at least a quarter of all VC web investment deals.

At that time, CB Insights Co-Founder Jonathan Sherry there was “steady uptick of venture investment into cloud-based software and services [in 2011].  In Q4, cloud-based companies comprised 26.5% of internet deal volume and 34.5% of  internet investment dollars.  Dollar share skewed higher than deal share due to mega deals including Dropbox and Box.net.”

It probably helped Kleiner’s cloud appetite that Michael Abbott joined the company as senior partner in January. Abbott was formerly VP of engineering for Twitter. KPCB currently categorizes its investments in four focus areas: Greentech, China, digital and life sciences.

It doesn’t ease confusion that even traditional software companies are adding cloud capabilities to their existing on-premises software portfolios. Does a smattering of cloud added to an existing product line make it a cloud company? You tell me.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user 401K

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Will devices be the next victim in the net neutrality debate?

Remember that whole network neutrality fight in the U.S. from 2009 and 2010? Well back then the issue was over applications hogging precious bandwidth, and ISPs hoping to charge the likes of Google, Netflix and others for the increasing traffic running across wireline and wireless pipes. Korea Telecom in South Korea has taken an interesting twist on the idea, and decided to block Samsung’s Smart TVs from accessing the Internet, according to this article from the Maeil Business Newspaper, a large S. Korean daily. That’s right, net neutrality isn’t just for applications anymore.

According to the story, KT cut off Samsung’s Smart TVs Friday morning after a dispute over how much data those TVs consume. From the story:

The dispute has been festering for a while as KT insists smart TVs share the costs of quality maintenance of the internet as they tend to hog the networks, while TV makers argue they have no obligation to do so.

The argument is familiar. Remember this quote from Ed Whitacre when he was the CEO of AT&T?

“How do you think they’re going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain’t going to let them do that because we have spent this capital and we have to have a return on it. So there’s going to have to be some mechanism for these people who use these pipes to pay for the portion they’re using. Why should they be allowed to use my pipes?”

Or what about this quote from John Petter, managing director of BT Retail’s consumer business?

“We can’t give the content providers a completely free ride and continue to give customers the [service] they want at the price they expect.”

But this angle of attacking a device seems new and troublesome. It’s unclear if this is a problem in Korea because Samsung is based there and KT feels like it might have less success going after a content provider like Netflix or Google. However, if other ISPs follow suit, would Roku, Boxee or even Smart TV makers such as LG or Vizio be next in line for some form of blocking?

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