The company innovates quickly: for instance, it has recently launched a tiny machine that washes little more than one change of clothing and was an instant hit in Shanghai, where living conditions are cramped but residents care about clean clothes.

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Munjal Shah, a Google product manager, said the company worked with about 100 fashion taste-makers such as celebrities, stylists, and designers to pick out clothing they like and teach Google's machine-learning algorithms about their style and tastes.

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They can also check when their dorm's peak laundry time is, so they can avoid having their sopping wet clothing taken out of the washer by someone else desperate to use the machine.

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