Believe it or not, Blogger still exists and is free. I did some research when I was looking to spin up a blog for professional purposes. I ended up just rolling it into my personal blog though, for various reasons, I haven't done a lot with it yet. Project for the new year.

You can hate on Google all you like but it hasn't been killed by Google yet and has been a long time--and is simple, adequate, and free even if it doesn't handle all the more advanced use cases.