Microsoft tries a new role: Moral leader

It has come a long way from being portrayed a corporate predator

Facebook and Google are under the microscope for the ways their technologies can spread misinformation, while Amazon’s growing market power is a regular target of President Trump. And Apple pioneered the modern smartphone, a device increasingly seen as too addicting.

Then there’s Microsoft, a giant that spent most of the 1990s and early 2000s as tech’s biggest company and villain. It now seems to be auditioning for a different role: The industry’s moral conscience.

Among the five most valuable tech companies, Microsoft is the only one to avoid sustained public criticism about contributing to social ills in the last couple of years.