you can have a lot of backlinks, more than 1 million on one year. What i do, i make an link exchange with other website, my link was on every page of others website, an google se me like: one page= one backlinks, that means i have over 15k backlinck just from one website...
You would be off Google`s Xmas card list I bet they have a special penalty for hitting 1 million links in a year lol, I reckon its not long till someone does hit that figue with all the automated software on the market.