Requests is a mature library, Python urllib is not even able to handle file downloads correctly because it will throw IncompleteRead error, I really don’t understand. Also, keep in mind that its creator already authorized Python to do it.
I would be interested in knowing the reason or why not add requests.
If requests were added to the standard library, it would not change either of those things.
requestsis a pure-Python project, so we can be sure it is possible. (Okay, perhaps not: maybe that relies on one of its dependencies, which might have its own C code to do it - that takes a lot of work to check.) If you want to know how requests does it, the source code is there. Being more specific than that would require a fair bit of research or analysis - I don’t know if anyone else will want to attempt it for you.