libc is C's "standard" library. It has a lot of stuff in it that some programs, especially small single purpose ones, don't need. So when a very simple program is linked into an executable, it has a bunch of extra stuff brought along for the ride. If you write helloworld.c (the canonical 4 line program in C) and link it on Ubuntu 14.04LTS it is 6240 bytes stripped, 8511 bytes unstripped. With this version of libc you can make it 1/5th that size.

Not a huge deal on large systems with giant disks and memory but a lot of ARM linux users are rediscovering the joys of small binaries, especially on limited space eMMC storage for the kernel and all the programs and libraries.