Comment 4 for bug 355329

I just filled a bug against Pidgin has some similar ideas. I had the idea of giving the Indicator Applet the ability to instruct Pidgin to hide it's icon when IA was present. Pidgin would delegate the responsibility of providing access to the Pidgin interface to itself, removing the redundant icon problem. Perhaps the same functionality could be provided to Evolution removing the requirement to keep it open all the time?

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pidgin/+bug/356024