OK, so I've had a few days of living with and checking out the offerings of Google vs. Microsoft around my blog-life. Here's what I've found.
Google, through Blogger (www.blogger.com) is much more of a pure blogging site. It puts up a place for you to blog away, but not much else. They have powerful tools available where you can modify your site to a large degree and make it look like either a standard blog, or you can add in things from Google and from all over the web to make it almost anything you want - within the limits of their tools. You can drill right down to the html code and modify to your heart's content.
Microsoft, through Live Spaces (http://spaces.live.com) is more of a social site with blogging abilities and it ties in pretty well with a Microsoft based computer (which is what got me so excited to start with). I don't have a My Space page (gasp!), and I don't have a Facebook page, nor a Twitter account, nor any of the myriad of other social site opportunities that are out there. So I don't really know the social site phenomena, so I can't judge Microsoft on how well they've pulled this off. I do know they offer some great ways to share your personal or professional life with folks. With a few clicks, the photos you've stored in your Windows Pictures folder can be zoomed up to the web. You can make blog entries, have your photos, and a LOT of other stuff all appear on your Spaces page. But for customizing the blog in the ways that Google can, you're out of luck. You can get to some of the html editing, but I've had nothing but problems doing things with Spaces that I've done with Google's Blogger - but they are aimed (I think) at two different markets. (By the way, I am writing this post with Windows Live Writer, which I LOVE for being able to write posts and such without signing into Google.)
Google's different products, like Blogger, Analytics, Reader, Gmail and Adsense do integrate together (which is what started my journey to see what Microsoft offered), but on a pretty lean, technical level. Google's interfaces are pretty simple and sparse, which I'm lead to believe is a purposeful thing. All these products share a single login name and password, which is nice, but they seem to have trouble remembering that you are signed in to other products, making you sign in again, and again, yet other times, not have to do so. I'm probably not using them right, but I'm using them as I use them. You have to understand how the blog works internally, and use the customize feature to add/integrate features from their other products. I know from experience, that one of my sisters who also blogs would never, ever be able to navigate and understand what she needs to do to add things to her blog. She might not want to do the things that I do, but when she does, I'll have to do it for her. For example, I've added the Google gadget to my blog where I can add with a single click, a link to an article I like that I've found in Google Reader. However, to do so meant I needed to add the gadget to my blog layout, and that would be beyond my sister's abilities. I don't mean to pick on her, but she represents the vast majority of computer users out there. She is to computers what I am to automobiles - I turn the key and it does or doesn't work - but don't ask me why.
So for my needs, I'm going to stick with the Google world. I'll keep the Microsoft side of things for exploring capabilities as they are added. But since I like technical things, and pushing the technical limits of the blog - Google is where I'll stay. But maybe I'll talk to my sister about how I see the Microsoft stuff being able to help her in her work (but after I finish my vacation).
One major thing - controlling the advertising. On Google, the only ads that appear are the ads that I place there and can share in the revenue from Google. With Microsoft, the ads belong to them and I haven't found a way to make sure that things I don't want (mature subjects, etc.) appear. I don't share in the revenue. They did ask for my Amazon affiliate name, but I've been scouring Microsoft and the web to find out how to possibly earn from that relationship - and I can't find anything that seems to make sense to me. I'll never get rich from my blogging, but Google does offer the chance to make a few coins.
