Let's think about my journey. Free Blogger to free Wordpress then went on to custom domain Wordpress, shut everything down and hiatus from blogging. Now I restarted with a free Blogger account, considering to move back into custom domain Wordpress. I hope my experiences ain't too little across the bandwidth.

I find that Blogger is extremely easy for startup blogs and non-technical users. If someone's is merely into simple blogging, Blogger works extremely well. For non-technical users especially, editing HTML codes (Blogger) is a lot easier than CSS codes (Wordpress). HTML codes are still pretty simple to understand. The same can be said for CSS but unless you have been working on it for quite a while. Web developers should draw a line between a developer and a blogger. Does a blogger want to spend 1 hour tweaking codes or much prefer spend 1 hour writing posts? What a developer thinks is good is not necessary good for the end-user. That is why we have so many technological products that failed to gain traction among the critical mass of potential customers. It's like; every developer can be a blogger, but not every blogger is interested in web development.

Being able to upload your own themes and customize them without spending a single cent is one of the biggest attractions to Blogger, unlike Wordpress that requires you to pay for every little upgrade. And considering the pricing of most of the upgrades, they are better off with one-click installs with hosting companies than buy them direct off Wordpress. When I was still on my self-hosted Wordpress, I saved a ton of money doing this.

Beyond that, if one is searching for a really professional CMS, Wordpress is the way to go. One's able to make minor editing (like grammatical errors) of comments without having to delete the whole message. Wordpress's spam protection is also a big draw which Blogger pales in comparison. A whole lot of additional widgets can be added, like user-ban etc, which are also lacking in Blogger. Multiple authors is a plus, but unless you are running a full online publication. For personal blogs, is there really such a need?

The key difference, a self-hosted Wordpress. If we're comparing solely on free blogging, Blogger is better than Wordpress beyond any doubts. Just on uploading customized themes alone, how fantastic to have a few millions free Wordpress blogs looking all the same from the limited pool of themes? Downright boring. Blogger allows you to do so, and look at the variety we have on free Blogger accounts. Impressive. I have to agree with Jennifer that Blogger is pretty much a no-brainer navigator even for a beginner blogger. With so many Wordpress themes being converted and ported over to fit into Blogger which now, we can customize them in Blogger but not Wordpress, why would I want a Wordpress free account? If I were to move over to Wordpress, it will surely be a self-hosted one. Not a free Wordpress blog with limited functions I can do.

Discussing Wordpress vs Blogger/Typepad is like debating on Apple vs everything else.
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