Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Zigbee Alliance have all teamed up to work on an open-source network standard. The new working group has already gone live under the name of “Project Connected Home over IP” or CHIP.

According to the new website, the project is aimed at simplifying development for manufacturers and increase compatibility for consumers. By building upon Internet Protocol (IP), the project aims to enable communication across smart home devices, mobile apps, and cloud services and to define a specific set of IP-based networking technologies for device certification.

The working group plans to develop and promote the adoption of a new, royalty-free connectivity standard to increase compatibility among smart home products, with security as a fundamental design tenet.

Zigbee Alliance board member companies such as IKEA, Legrand, NXP Semiconductors, Resideo, Samsung SmartThings, Schneider Electric, Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Silicon Labs, Somfy, and Wulian are also onboard to join the working group and contribute to the project.

The working group will take an open-source approach for the development and implementation of a new, unified connectivity protocol.

With the new project, it will be easier for device manufacturers to build devices that are compatible with smart home and voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, and others. The planned protocol should complement existing technologies.

Google said it is contributing two of its open-source smart home technologies, Weave and Thread, to the new project.