alt Hacker NewsBack in the late 90s a senior Microsoft exec explained this to me, they had acquired staff and continued to operate entire divisions which he described as "ballast". In the future, once the stock price increases slowed, they would be heaved over the edge of the balloon basket so that it could continue to rise. I often think about that.
old sysadmin trick: create large file on a disk and in a dire situation when DB runs out of space delete it.