Google didn't have anyone sky-diving into Moscone at this year's I/O developer conference, but it did have news about virtual reality, the next version of Android, and a new platform for the Internet of Things.

Project Brillo is a version of Android for your Internet-connected home gadgets. Entrepreneurs have made great strides in getting everything from your coffee pot to your fridge connected to the Internet, but Brillo is about getting those devices to seamlessly communicate with one another.

"Our day-to-day lives will be much simpler when these technologies can talk to each other—if our recipe app, for example, could communicate with our smart oven to turn the temperature to exactly the right setting," Google said in a blog post. "​Or outside the home—from transportation systems that notify commuters of schedule changes, to farms where harvesters and irrigation systems are controlled from phones."

But with so many different systems and standards, it can be hard to get things to work together. And while you might argue that Brillo is just adding another option to the pile, Android is at least a very popular operating system for mobile and home devices alike.

Brillo is "derived from Android [and] lets developers and manufacturers build connected devices," Google said. "As part of Brillo, we're introducing a communications protocol (Weave) developed in partnership with Nest, a set of developer APIs, a core set of schemas, and a certification program to ensure device and app interoperability."

During today's I/O keynote, Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome, and Apps at Google, said Brillo is "derived from Android" but has been "polished" down to the lower layers of the OS.

Brillo will arrive for developers later this year. For more, check out PCMag's live blog from Google I/O.