Google’s Blogger.com, the original blog publishing platform for the world, has unveiled a new beta version that has enhanced privacy settings. You can now specify if a blog is public, private or by invitation only.

Steve Rubel comments : “I signed up for the Blogger beta and found the changes to be very intuitive although evolutionary from the last big upgrade. However, already there is a big hole for private blogs. By default Google turns on feeds for all new blogs. When these blogs are private, the feeds are still totally public and therefore can and will be indexed by search engines. Google should treat feeds on private blogs the same way they do in Google Calendar.”

TechCrunch notes : “… in my experience the beta system isn’t stable enough to use yet. You can check it out now though. Blogger users will be notified when they are invited to switch over to the beta version. … There is a long list of new and updated features, but in the long run I’m guessing that integration of Blogger with Google Accounts may make the biggest difference.”

Blogger was developed by Pyra Labs in 1999, and sold to Google in 2003. The company has rather sat on it ever since, making small changes here and there and allowing millions of spam “splogs” to build up on the system. It’s generally recognized though that Blogger is the simplest way to put up a free blog and learn to manipulate the template code.