GQSB was first released as a developer preview on January 12, 2009. It is still in beta, and a new version is released approximately monthly. The releases follow the sequence of chemical elements from the periodic table. The first public release was named Scandium and As of August 2009 the current release is Cobalt. Like other Google products such as the Chrome browser, QSB is open-source software. However, just as with Chrome, Google distributes official builds with extra functionality. In the case of QSB, this includes plugin validation, auto-update, and Google-branded icons. In Mac OS X Snow Leopard, QSB has replaced Google Desktop.