Varbinary datatype in SQL

Yesterday I was checking out the Database for my project to find a Table contained a Coloumn named Data with a
Varbinary(max) datatype ..There was another coloumn called as FileName ..which was of type nvarchar . All the
files listed under the filename where of type XML ..which means the Data coloumn has all xml data . This got me a
bit confused to why not use datatype of XML instead Varbinary(Max).
Upon doing some research I came to know that was because Varbinary datatype can not only hold XML data ,but can also hold Zip/CSV formats .Though all the data were of XML type , just for extendability purpose the architect had decided to go with Varbinary ,which was a real cool thing to keep in min