Atleast the future is not links. With the move towards reactive js based clients, restful api based services, links hardly have the requisite data for indexing. Even page content is extremely fickle to index.
Google must be having a js engine as part of its web indexing process.
They do, and have been using it for quite some time. Not only will they execute JS, they will also do AJAX requests and index the content that is returned.
Since the overwhelming majority of the web is still static, I believe links will be fine for the foreseeable future.
Google must be having a js engine as part of its web indexing process.