Chrome being penalized was a bit of a special case. Google got caught (even though it wasn't directly them) and they gave a harsher punishment to themselves be

Chrome being penalized was a bit of a special case. Google got caught (even though it wasn't directly them) and they gave a harsher punishment to themselves because they claim they hold themselves to a higher standard. The whole thing was really damage control to save their reputation, they already had a lot of scandals this year. In reality, links are almost never seen as a negative. Which is really a shame, because it makes it harder for good-guy SEO's to legitimately build links when you can just buy 10,000 on Fiverr and not worry about it. And most black-hat SEOs buy links from many players, so even if some are discounted they won't usually still come out on top. Google is getting better at it though. Recently they've been cracking down on blog networks. This is purely conjecture, but I do believe that links are on their way out as the primary signal.