Does gmail actually trust the incoming forwarded email? Or mark a lot of it as spam.

My understanding is that SPF makes forwarding like this no longer possible if the original sender's address is to be preserved.

If they are using GMail for work, the DNS just points to GMails actual server and authenticates using DKIM as well. Google for Work will provide you with the necessary DNS entries to set. Obviously this will not work with their free offering, you'll need to fork over $6/month for this.

Yes, though this isn't forwarding. The mail is actively being delivered into gmail, who must be programmed to accept mail for that domain.

Forwarding, on the other hand, made it possible to do a simple redirect of one address to another (eg. ~/.forward) but strict SPF rules will deny the forwarder as a valid source for the mails.

I used to do this but found every now and again I'd get multi-minute long delays before gmail picked it up. I've since moved to paying for Google Workspace to host my email (eventually hoping I'll move to something cheaper).

The goal is to get my personal domain to be my email domain for exactly this reason.

For my soon-to-be-born son, I'm registering him a personal domain immediately, and I'll turn it over to him when he's old enough to have email - save him some trouble.

But what if... the TLD owner decides to 10x the domain price?

As someone who de-googled about 5 years ago by buying a nice three letter .io address this hits right in the feels.

I could go through the process again (not fun) with some ridiculously long .com/.net or other OG tld which are probably somewhat more resistant to rent seeking practices like this or I just suck it up and hope it remains pricey but not egregious.

Are there any truly "community-owned" TLDs for the tech community? Would such a thing be possible and/or useful?

For Canadians, .ca seems a generally well behaved and managed TLD under community control.

EDIT: .ca is not particularly tech community related, but that doesn’t matter to me.

For personal domains, I bite the initial cost and buy the domain for 10 years, then every year top it up to 10 again. For a $20/yr domain that’s only $200 up front, and if the cost suddenly goes up or some other TLD policy changes that I hate, I have plenty of time to gradually move to a cheaper/better domain.

One thing I’m not sure of is what happens if I want to switch registrars in that time—will the full 10 years of ownership transfer to the new registrar?

Like you, I have domains registered for 10 years and extend it every year so that it always remains at 10 years.

If you switch registrars, your domain validity continues as before. Your registration information is with the registry for your TLD, not with the registrar alone. So your 10 years of (future) ownership will carry over. Two caveats to note. The first is that you can’t transfer a domain within 60 days of purchase or renewal. The second that I’ve seen is that a transfer to another registrar requires a one year renewal for the domain. So I’m guessing you may not be able to transfer a domain that’s already at 10 years (even taking into account 60 days after the renewal to keep it at 10 years). But if your domain is at nine years, you’d surely be able to transfer, and it would become 10 years at the time of transfer.

The expiry date never changes through all these actions.

Epik lets you buy domains more or less permanently for a large upfront cost (~$600 for a typical otherwise $10/year domain IIRC). Anyone know any other registrars that do?

Transfer the domain. You can generally find a deal for transferred domains.

When you reply to emails, does google let you put your custom domain address as the sender so folks don't see the underlying gmail address?

In fact Gmail requires you to add your SMTP if you want to send from a non-gmail address.

Yes.

Do you use Namecheap's email inbox or is that accomplished just with DNS records?