Apple has cut its spending on Amazon Web Services dramatically over the past year, to around $370 million in 2018 from $775 million in 2017, according to a person with direct knowledge of the figures. The reduction is partly due to Apple’s decision to operate more of its own cloud services, in keeping with the company’s broader philosophy of controlling the technology behind its products.

Apple for years has depended on cloud services from companies such as Google and AWS to run its internet offerings for backing up photos, videos and other data from Apple devices. But it long has sought to become more self-sufficient in its cloud operations and suffered numerous setbacks along the way. The rationale for doing so, though, was reinforced by a previously unreported incident from several years ago, when some Apple customers temporarily lost access to photos and other data due to a fire in a data center operated by Google.