Scratch off one of the 34 predictions for 2005 (admittedly, an easier one), as the news is in from Gates himself: there will be an Internet Explorer 7 this year! More news via the IE Blog:

Today at RSA, Bill Gates talked about Internet Explorer 7. As the guy responsible for IE, I wanted to say a couple of things about it. First, some basics: we’re committing to deliver a new version of Internet Explorer for Windows XP customers. Betas of IE7 will be available this summer. This new release will build on the work we did in Windows XP SP2 and (among other things) go further to defend users from phishing as well as deceptive or malicious software.

This is a wise move and one that simply could note be ignored. Depending on the quality of IE 7 of course, this could really put a screwdriver in the Firefox spokes. Full press release here.