Reading web page from VB.NET Windows app

Hello everyone,

at the moment i'm working on a quite complicated project. The point is
that I need to parse some text files (*.txt, *.doc etc.)

I'm using Google Web Service to retrieve URLs from some queries ( key
phrases from parsed text).

So, I'd be grateful for supporting me and helping to solve these
problems:

---- How can i read text from *.doc files? I need only pure text to
read into String or StringBuilder

---- How can I read web pages? or at least how to open them? I've been
googling for a while and find allmost nothing.

I do not need to show the text or the web page, i need only the text
from them to parse.

Thanx for any help!