I'm running Windows XP and I only have 43k pixels on my toolbar without extending it to two or more lines.  I only speak, read and type in English (I'm sure that sentence alone speaks loudly about the education in the US) which means I don't need to lose 10% of those pixels to a language bar.  If you right click on the task bar and go to toolbars, you will see a selection for "Language bar".  Deselecting that will make it go away until you reboot and it comes back!  How do you permanently get rid of it?  Here's how:

• Go to your control panel and make sure you are in classic view.
• Open up the "Regional and Language Options"
• Select the "Languages" Tab at the top
• Click the "Details" button in the "Text services and input langauges" box
• Click the "Langauge Bar..." button in the bottom "Preferences" box
• Uncheck "Show the Language bar on the desktop"

That's it! 

Now I have extra room to have IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari all in my quick launch bar ;)  I'll save my rant about all the different browsers for another day.