The Securities and Exchange Commission had similar questions as MarketWatch about why Alphabet Inc. does not break out revenue for its YouTube business, but appears to be willing to allow Google to continue the practice for now.

The SEC on Monday published correspondence between Alphabet GOOGL, -1.72% GOOG, -1.83% and U.S. regulators that seeks to understand the company’s reasoning for its approach to financial reporting. Through nearly half a year of back-and-forth, one theme is prevalent: Who knows about YouTube revenue, and when do they find out?

This is a very important question at the moment, as new revenue-recognition rules suggest that investors should receive the same information as the top executive in an organization. In other words, if Alphabet’s top decision-maker gets YouTube financial information, so should we, a point MarketWatch has mademore than once as YouTube has become one of the most important online services in the world.

Don’t miss: YouTube and Instagram revenue remains hidden

Alphabet’s labyrinthine corporate structure, added to new rules that have not yet taken effect for all companies, make for very involved and confusing communications between the company and regulators. Basically, Alphabet explained that Larry Page — co-founder of Google and chief executive of the umbrella organization named Alphabet — would be considered its top decision maker, and he only sees very base YouTube revenue information on a quarterly basis because Alphabet views YouTube advertising the same as the search ads that are the core of Google’s business.

The SEC spent months asking for more granular explanations about what Page sees, why he is the one who sees it, and what he does with it. In its first letter last July, the SEC asked many questions about Alphabet’s segment reporting and its revenue recognition, specifically seeking more information on the fast-growing YouTube advertising business. In its third follow-up in early November, the SEC mentioned YouTube a half-dozen times, keying on disclosures the company made about its corporate structure that could continue to keep YouTube revenue hidden from investors.

In its final response letter, in mid-December, Alphabet included an organizational chart, showing Page at the head, with 10 other business-unit CEOs underneath him. One of those is Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who is said to be the executive who gets more information on YouTube and has decision-making power over the Google segment.

Google Assistant vs. Amazon Alexa: When will we get to choose our voice assistant?

Page, Alphabet said, receives YouTube revenue information on a quarterly basis, but not fuller breakouts such as profitability and expenses. Most important, he does not make decisions for YouTube based on those numbers.

“As part of our annual planning process, Larry Page approves operating budgets for Google as a whole and each individual Other Bet,” Alphabet stated. “He does not allocate resources to the individual product areas within Google or within individual Other Bets.”

So Alphabet is playing a bit of a shell game, with the idea that if Page is not allocating resources himself to the individual product areas within Google, such as YouTube, those product areas are not material enough to be part of its segment reporting, or to be spelled out as a line item.

How voice-assistant software can revolutionize the entire household

Another key part of Alphabet’s argument is that all of its advertising is the same in executives’ eyes, whether it be a 15-second preroll advertisement on YouTube, a mobile display ad placed on another company’s website, or a text ad placed at the top of a string of search results.

“Google is largely a single online advertising business, with other smaller product areas within the Google ecosystem,” the company summarized.

Read: ‘Google is at Apple’s mercy,’ earnings show

The SEC seems to have accepted Alphabet’s response for now, posting a January letter that said it has completed its review. The SEC typically does not discuss the reviews it undertakes beyond posting the correspondence; a spokeswoman for Alphabet said the company would not comment beyond the filings.

Alphabet should take the SEC’s obvious concerns to heart as it adopts the new revenue-recognition rules this year, however. If the SEC decides to make Alphabet a test case for the new rules — and another recently adopted standard on segmentation — it certainly has the fodder to do so based on YouTube’s size and Alphabet’s flimsy defense.

See also: A revenue rule change is coming and every company will be affected

Daniel Ives, head of technology research at GBH Insights, estimated last month that YouTube will reach about $13 billion in revenue in 2018 — more than the $11.7 billion Netflix Inc. NFLX, -0.24% made last year. That is a material amount of revenue generation even for a giant as huge as Alphabet, and 10% of Google’s expected $130 billion in total 2018 revenue.

Alphabet’s counterargument is specious. Video advertisements and text advertisements are not the same, even if the company sells them through the same portals. Alphabet‘s corporate structure would need a diagram similar to Russell Crowe’s blackboard in “A Beautiful Mind” to explain, and the company appears to be using that complexity to diffuse financial information in exactly the way it needs to potentially avoid revealing the performance of one of its premier services.

The SEC will surely be watching everything Alphabet says about YouTube closely in upcoming financial reports and public statements, ready to pounce if it decides this farce has gone on too long. Alphabet could avoid all this trouble, and the cloud of SEC eyes that will loom over it in the future, by just offering YouTube results to its investors.