Rich Snippets vs Inbound Links

I got the following opinion: Google went overboard with giving importance to incoming links, which led to a drop in relevance due to the creation of a market for buying / selling links. And Rich Snippets is a method that again gives onetime importance to onpage factors. That is, now, when Google decides who is ahead, it is not at all necessary that there will be a page with a large number of incoming links ahead, but pages that have crammed into their index Rich Snippets / Sitelinks etc. will come out ahead.
Opinion is based on empirical experience, so it does not pretend to be bound, but it seems to me that it explains some internal logic.