I wouldn't mind having an option to let the optimizer run longer to find a "best" execution plan, as long as the result was cached and became usable by later queries that didn't have the option set. This is something that could be run during off hours and could potentially pay dividends. I say "potentially" because I agree with the author, and Jeff, that HOW you ask for equivalent results is the true key to performance gains.

That said, it would be an interesting challenge to try to write code that would analyze queries and suggest alternative coding that might run faster.