(echo 'GET /'; echo; sleep 1; ) | telnet www.google.com 80
If you are ever in a minimal headless *nix which doesn't have any command line utilities for downloading files (no curl, wget, lynx) but you have telnet, then this can be a workaround.
Another option is netcat:
/usr/bin/printf 'GET / \n' | nc www.google.com 80
Credit goes to this post: http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/83987/17433