How to miss potentially important Google Chat notifications

There appears to be a significant flaw in the Google Chat notification model
that can easily cause desktop users to be unaware of important chat replies
for hours, days—or indefinitely. It happened to me.

These notification issues may relate to the hangouts->chat migration.  On
(linux) desktops, there's no longer a native official Google Chat app, so if
Chrome isn't running there are apparently no related desktop notifications.

The desktop notification that Chrome throws when running (even when not
showing Gmail) …

chat google notifications