I don't think Google will shutdown Blogger. There are some HUGE Blogger blogs out there. There are also many local community-focused blogs that get loads of comments. Blogger is very much alive and earning money for Google via AdSense.

They did shutdown the subscribe-to-posts via email feature, which was like a free unlimited subscriber newsletter.

I don't even want to get into why Blogger is so great, because if I say what I know, people will start abusing it.