eBay plans to add image-recognition technology to its mobile offerings, allowing shoppers to snap photos of items they covet – such as a dress a friend is wearing – so that an eBay app will match up with similar items for sale on eBay.com.

Speaking on the sidelines of eBay Inc’s X.commerce conference in San Francisco yesterday, CEO John Donahoe said eBay planned to roll out the feature by the year’s end.

The California-based online auction site has not yet decided which of eBay’s apps will get the feature; besides eBay Mobile the company offers a fashion app and several others. It’s also not clear if the feature would work just for items like clothing and accessories or if it would eventually find any products on eBay.

eBay’s plan sounds somewhat like Google Inc’s Google Goggles smartphone app, which lets users photograph text or objects that Google then searches the web for.