This is an old question, anyway:
1. You CAN NOT fetch data via rest api version 2 using browser, but you can do that with rest api version 1.

2. Version 8.5 currently does not return anything if you try to fetch data via Rest API v2 using browser, version 8.4 used to return an error.

I can fetch data in both versions of Rest API with no problems.
My skype id is ex_expert.