Ford (NYSE: F) announced late yesterday that it would cut back on the production of SUVs and large pickup trucks. I guess the harsh reality of high gas prices is finally sinking in at Ford headquarters. It's about time.

Ford will close its Wayne, Michigan truck plant for five weeks this summer. The plant is the source of Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators, sad relics of the cheap gas and mindless consumption era. Not that I think mindless consumption is going anywhere, but cheap gas is probably gone for good. Both vehicles have seen double digit declines in sales this year.

And that's not the only major realignment in the works. Rumor has it that the Kentucky truck plant that produces the F-Series Super Duty pickup trucks will shut down for a month. Seems that expensive gas and a shriveling housing bubble has drastically reduced the demand for big work trucks. These plant closings come on top of a 10% reduction in truck production announced in March.

And in what seems like an admission of defeat for the profligate and war-inspiring American Way of Life, Ford said that it is planning a smaller pickup truck to be introduced in 2011. The truck will be based on the F-150, but be smaller and lighter and use a six-cylinder engine. Speculation is that the new truck, which may be called the F-100, will replace the Ranger.

Although AOL has chosen to withdraw continuing development of the Netscape Navigator browser, you'll be able to continue using it indefinitely. Honestly though, who would want to?

Netscape doesn't have much in the way of loyalists in the realm of content suppliers, and web users seem not to care much what browser they use as long as the utility is fast, accurate and simple. I myself switched from Netscape to Firefox during the last year because Navigator was giving me image handling problems and Mozilla Firefox proved to be easier, faster and less burdensome.

Since 1994, Netscape has been a leading-edge web utility. However in recent years, competition from Mozilla Firefox has relentlessly scooped away market share from Netscape and a strong and victorious competitive battle has been waged in the interest of Internet Explorer by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Although Netscape proved to be a strong web utility, in the last few years it lacked any significant improvements in user friendliness. I think that situation is in part due to Microsoft's reluctance to make the Windows operating system play nice with Netscape Navigator. We may take pause to wonder if Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) ever properly applied pressure on Microsoft over the situation ... probably not.

In the big picture, no one is going to miss Netscape Navigator. Yes, some few loyalists might whine for a while and some people with fully loaded hard drives might find their machines maxed out by the downloading of a new browser and the system changes associated with that, but in the end it's all good if it makes the browsing experience faster and easier for the end user. Besides, it might force the sale of some new computers, yes?

Perhaps AOL should just spin off Netscape, take a bit of cash for it and write the rest off. That might be easiest in the long run. When given the fact that AOL will apparently be relegating Netscape to second-tier status, do you really think it'll ever get better?

Stick a fork in it gang, it's done.