No, and I'm 100% in agreement with the need for it to be removed, it was clearly malware.

The question I see is really that Apple doesn't inform its users of the existence of this feature, unless you really search for it. Having something as simple as a functional-equivalent to Windows Defender with its own icon in Control Panel, which is fully enabled in the default operating system installation, should be sufficient.

Personally, unless I am specifically aware of the existence and enabled status of some anti-malware application, I don't think it's a good precedent to set for operating system vendors to start silently removing software from peoples' machines. Really all it should take is apple making people aware of the feature's existence.