The arrival of summer has led me to reflect on the 2006 predictions I made late last year. You’re not going to believe this, but we’re past the halfway mark and almost none of them have come true. In hopes of saving face, here now is a revised set of predictions to close out the year:

• A new summer blockbuster will sweep the box office: “An Inconvenient Truth Returns,” starring the Fourth Amendment (Lindsay Lohan).
• Taking a page from Google’s playbook, Yahoo will announce that its engineers need spend only 80% of their time on core company projects. The remaining 20% will be spent helping Iran enrich Uranium. After outrage erupts, Yahoo will issue a terse statement that “This policy is rigorously consistent with our moral code. Just last month, we bent over for both the U.S. and China.”
• The propaganda war will reach fever pitch after Microsoft executive Brad Miller blasts Google’s “inconsistent, inane and ultimately dishonest” naming scheme for its beta products. Miller is Assistant Passport to the Vice-VP of Windows Live.com.NET.
• Citizen journalism will finally topple Old Media, ushering in a remarkable new age of incisive journalism—”That Dude Across the Street Walks His Dog”; “Local Mail Arrives Ten Minutes Past 4″. Illegal immigrants will protest the discriminatory name, forcing the blogosphere to rechristen the new model “Asscasting”, short for “Broadcasting while sitting on my ass, which will never leave this chair.”
• The rebranding will be welcome news for a Microsoft weary of the “podcast” meme and its iPod connotations, because everyone is already calling the company’s new iPod-killer “Ass”.
• Bowing to growing complaints about the cost of gas, six major gas companies will finally lower prices—by changing the unit of measurement. Where you once paid $74.23 USD to fill your tank, you will now pay only .01 PS3, or 1/89th the cost of a PlayStation 3.
• The Senate will deliver a harsh and final ruling against net neutrality, chastising industry heavyweights Google and Yahoo that “the government has no authority on the information superhighway… p.s. pls fax 12 trillion search records to mike @ doj asap.” Yahoo will publicly and vehemently repudiate the outrageous request, declaring “9.6 trillion, tops. Our engineers can only spend 80% of their time on this.”
• AOL will sink back to its original 53,651 subscribers, then implode.
• Gates will cement his reputation as a legendary philanthropist by tackling the world’s most potent disease: the GPL. He will be stymied by Larry Ellison’s hostile takeover of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
• Google will release a stunning new Labs product that captures the world’s attention—”Search”—but the Test Preview Beta Green Ooze will quickly be sealed off due to unexpected load after both Larry AND Sergey sign up. Investor rebuke comes swiftly, with GOOG sliding to close at +922 (10 PS3) for the day.
• Inspired by the positive press surrounding Gates’ new focus on curing disease, improving education and spreading human rights, President Bush will announce that he, too, is stepping down to focus on these pressing issues.