I think the point of the article is that an optimizer doesn't affect the barrier to entry at all, but adding it would save end users quite a bit of money. So they don't do it because end users' money is revenue for Snowflake/Alphabet
Can you imagine how much we would laugh if modern web browsers identified themselves to servers by all saying they were Mozilla browsers and referencing old technologies like Gecko?
Giving you the benefit of the doubt: you've conflated the Russian yearly budget with Maryland's GDP. Russian GDP of 2 Trillion would be the second in the US, between California and Texas