Difference between cloning and downloading

When you download the repo it just gives you all the source files with no .git so you dont have the repo. When you clone you get a copy of the history and it is a functional git repo.

Downloading a repository just downloads the files from the most recent commit of the default branch. It doesn't download any of the files in the .git folder. If this sounds like gibberish, all it does is download the most recent copy of the code. It doesn't download any of the history, so you can't browse through the history. You can't view any of the commit messages. You can't run git commands like git add, git push, etc. It's as if git never existed, and all you have is a copy of the code/files.