Christophe

Christophe Morin | IP3 | Getty Images Microsoft will stop relying on Amazon to help it run the popular Minecraft video game.

The shift represents an obvious way for Microsoft to cut back on payments to one of its toughest competitors and promote its own product. Amazon Web Services rules the market for public cloud infrastructure for running software from afar through vast data centers, and Microsoft has been working to take share with its Azure cloud.