I remember getting Windows 95 on the Internet, not having a browser, but having the command line FTP client built in and FTPing to cdrom.com to download a copy of Netscape so as to be able to get browsing.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wininet/n...
Downloading from HTTP has always been messy, specially for big files. The FTP API been always rock solid.
Edit: Apparently the Gopher API is also still available!
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/wininet/n...
and even has websites!
In January 2020, Veronica indexed 395 gopher servers,[16] within which it indexed approximately 4.5 million unique selectors. http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw?gopher/0/v2/vstat