I have heard that Google now gives less importance to paid links and homepage links. Is it true that the site which has done more paid links or homepage links will be given less importance? Please do reply me!
Google highly dislikes paid links so that's a pretty bad start. The question really is, that how does they find out that you have paid links pointing to your site?
Homepage link and paid links are high quality backlinks as long as Google don't find out they are paid links.
The predating part is important. this was an old program. one that was out there before Google had much popularity or even existed.suddenly Google decide paid links are bad.
They can't. Think about it. First, they have to find out. Most paid link deals are done behind closed doors. Second, penalizing paid links puts google on shaky ground. It would allow people to get their competition sites banned or penalized. The most google would do is discount the paid link (ie. convert it to no-follow) if they found out. The only way google would get you is through over optimization penalty. Basically if you get 100 pr 1 links with all same anchor text within a few days google will know something is fishy and penalize you (and even that doesn't happen often since google doesn't want to hurt innocent site).