Probably the easiest way of reading raw Web page content is using the Web client object. This will read the Web content of http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/, the PowerShell team blog:
$url = 'http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/'
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$wc.DownloadString($url)
$wc = New-Object System.Net.WebClient
$wc.DownloadString($url)
