> I am not confident that taking a picture is a better solution than just typing in the name for the vast majority of items

I call this the Minority Report effect. When an idea seems cool but in practice is much less usable and practical. And tries to solve a problem that never existed. Do I want to wave my hands in the air to control an interface or rest them on a table? Obviously the latter. It's worked very well for decades.

>Either way, I am not confident that taking a picture is a better solution than just typing in the name for the vast majority of items.

It's a great solution for "I want another one like this one but searching for it returns 10000 different items"

That seems like a rare case to me. Typically there's a company name or model number somewhere on the item, and often that identifier returns a very specific item.

Looking around my house, I only see a few items that don't have unique identifiers like furniture or plates/utensils. However, I suspect the majority of things sold through Amazon/eBay are more likely to be video games, books, toys, etc. with very visible and highly unique names.

Consider fashion or home goods. Frequently you see something you like based on pattern, texture etc that cannot be easily described in words. Image search is the perfect fit for these kinds of purchases.

In case of goods from China brand name and model can be useless because a lot of products are just the same thing but just with a different fly-by-night Chinese firm logo on top.

Image search could be useful if you want to find all the listings for a specific Chinese product and compare prices or revisions.

Yes, the types of photos will have a huge impact. eBay most definitely has an advantage in that regard.