For news organizations without their own branded CMS, Blogger is one of the top blogging platforms out there. However, it’s no secret that WordPress is favored amongst blogging types for its extreme customizability and clean navigation. Today, Google announced a much-needed overhaul of the entire editing and management Blogger system, a move which will align the UI with their recent Gmail and Calendar redesigns. So, what’s different?

• Clean and simple blogging interface: According to Google’s blog, “The post editor has been expanded and simplified to give you a larger canvas for drafting and previewing your work.” The whole UI of the post editor is fresher and much easier to use.
• Integrated stats: Blogger’s Dashboard now offers a snapshot of Google Analytics for bloggers to better understand and grow their target audiences.
• Recommended blogs: Google is renowned for their creepily accurate recommendations, and now the Dashboard will recommend blogs you may be interested in based on your blog’s content.

Blogger’s new look comes at a time when Google is redesigning a large portion of their products to keep with a unified user experience. What do you think of the redesign?