Windows has and still does an excellent built-in FTP API also that was very handy. It works even on Windows 95 all the way to Windows 10.

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